AN ACCIDENTAL INTERCEPTION OF FATE
by Minisinoo
Summary: When Harry Met Sally, mutant style.  Prequel novel depicts early years at Xavier's, college-Scott, rise of the X-Men, why he and Jean fell in love, & the breakdown of a telepath when her powers explode catastrophically. No knowledge of X-Men needed.
1. Preface brief notes

**BRIEF PRELIMINARY (historical) NOTES:**

* * *

><p>The prologue to <em>An Accidental Interception of Fate<em> was initially posted on Jan. 16, 2001, but was not completed until July 14, 2003 - after a number of interruptions for other stories, including a couple novels. It won 4 separate awards: 2003 CBFFAs for "Best X-Men Media" (e.g., not comics-based), and "Best Romance"; the 2003 X-Day award for "Best Novel"; and was chosen as "Novel of the Year" by the Cyclops-website _Heart of a Hero_.

So even if it was not completed until the "middle" of my time writing for X-Men, I knew the PLOT of it - and all the background shown here - _before_ writing _Climb the Wind_ or _Heyoka_ ... both of which are much shorter. Like all my movie-based novels, it utilizes some characters from the (MUCH, more extensive) world of the comics, such as Lee Forrester - not to mention Hank McCoy and Warren Worthington (two of the Original Five). But sometimes I needed true originals, and AIoF introduced a couple who appear in later novels, most notably "Nostradamus," the future-seeing Frank (Francesco) Placido, and Scott's college roommate and best friend, E.J. Haight (not a mutant).

As a PREQUEL, it is NOT necessary to know anything about the X-Men, or to have ever watched an X-Men movie, to read this novel. Everything you need to know is explained within.

* * *

><p><strong>A FEW BASICS (posted withbefore all X-Men novels):**

In my X-Men fiction, I created TWO basic "worlds," each of which shares a common continuity. I re-use these because it's convenient, but that means things can get a bit confusing if one launches into the novels indiscriminately.

The **_chief difference_** between my two worlds involve radically different origins for Cyclops (Scott Summers). Essentially, these two worlds are "movie world" and "comic-based movie world." Or, **_Scott is not an orphan_** vs. **_Scott is an orphan_**. Each does have a "preliminary" or "prequel" novel that explains how the X-Men came to be in that particular "world."

In the first category (non-orphan), the history of Scott is based (loosely) on the history given in the novelization of the FIRST X-Men movie, or _X-Men I_ (dir. Bryan Singer, please don't confuse it with the recent _X-Men: First Class_). _X-Men I_ came out in 2000. The second category is much more heavily based on the comics themselves, and utilizes his official comics history as an orphan.

**_Novels/short stories that utilize the NON-ORPHAN background:_**  
><em>An Accidental Interception of Fate<em> (prequel)  
><em>Climb the Wind<em> (set after X1)  
>[<em>Heyoka<em> & _Children of the Middle Waters_ (not available on FF-net)]  
>(story series) "Man Behind Red Shades" &amp; "Micky Blue Eyes"<br>(short stories) "Letters and Papers from Prison," "Mutant Darwin Awards," "Sleepy Dragon," "101(and not Dalmatians)," "Bitch," "Idle Musings of a Woman at Eighty," "Broken," & "Agonia."

**_Novels/short stories that utilize the comics-based ORPHAN background:_**  
><em>Special: the genesis of Cyclops<em> (prequel)  
><em>Grail: a novel of resurrection<em> (set after X2)  
>(Short stories) "Five Pounds," &amp; "Anahinga,"<br>(Crossovers) "Case X-1743: Unresolved" (X-Files) & "The Room With a Computer" (Harry Potter)

In terms of sheer wordcount, I probably produced more work for X-Men than any other fandom, especially if one also counts the purely comics-based stories (or "comicverse" vs. "movieverse").


	2. Prologue: The House

Let us begin with the house.

Finished in 1789, upcountry of a slowly expanding New York, it became the retreat of a sour, die-hard Tory after the victory of the Colonies against Mother England. Five subsequent generations of Xaviers have lived there, and ivy has crept all the way to the third story and over the eaves in places. The entryway stones grow dangerously slick in wet weather due to buffing from the passage of many feet, and the main banister is sanded smooth from the slide of countless hands. Lead-glass panes in older windows have settled from the pull of gravity across two hundred years, the stables were built as an add-on to the main house in an age when no one dreamed of the automobile, and the current garage was once the carriage house. Aside from the main residence, there are servants' quarters, a gatekeeper's shack, and a boathouse.

The last Xavier to occupy the house - the last Xavier who ever would - had a British accent and British education that would have made his five-times-removed ancestor proud. But the plebian uses to which he put his venerable family mansion would have sent the poor man spinning in his grave.

It was one more private school in a county full of them: boarding schools where the offspring of upper-class American families received (or perhaps suffered) the same sort of education offered in similar boarding schools in Merry Ol' England. Literature, math, Latin, French, history, a little dance, a little music, riding lessons, and - most of all - training in the fine art of social snobbery and emotional cruelty.

But this particular school was not of that stripe. Beyond the iron gate and nondescript sign, up the gravel lane, past the trimmed hedges and carefully cleaned reflecting pool, lay a school for a very particular kind of student. "Gifted Youngsters" the sign advertised, and the neighbors took that for mere flattery: select parents with the right number of digits in their bank account could have a "gifted" child if they paid the yearly tuition. And the headmaster, the last Xavier, was content to let them think so.

Yet his students _were_ gifted, and a quirk of DNA had bestowed upon them abilities that respected neither bank account nor the purity of a WASP parentage. They were few in number, but that - the headmaster hoped - would change. Initially, only five young people lived there, and two were enrolled at nearby universities, coming to the house only on weekends. Of the younger three, the eldest could have graced any of the other local boarding schools without raising an eyebrow. He had the fine profile, sandy hair, narrow nose and height of his British cousins in the House of Lords across the great Atlantic lake, and a private jet that could fly him there in ten hours or less. His surname said old money, American royalty like the Vanderbilts, Carnegies and Roosevelts - Warren Worthington, III. His family owned a penthouse overlooking Central Park, and a private residence larger than Xavier's out on Long Island. That he also possessed a pair of perfectly functional feathered white wings - spanning sixteen feet at full extension - and the proportional strength and fine eyesight of a bird of prey was an ill-kept secret that made him popular at the right kind of society parties among his bored and jaded contemporaries. Wealth excused, even encouraged, a multitude of eccentricities.

Of the elder two students, one was also a member of New York society, if from a few rungs down the class ladder. Her shoes were imported leather from Italy and her dresses had designer names on the label, but she bought them at Bergdorf Goodman; they weren't tailor-made. Nonetheless, her mother held membership in the Annandale-on-Hudson chapter of DAR, and her pedigree had names that boasted a noble title in front, as well as a British spelling: Grey. The dark auburn hair, however, came from a Scottish girl, one Mary Jane Duncan, collateral descendant of Shakespeare's king in MacBeth - albeit a good deal more historical than the bard's characters. It was that ancestor's son whom this young woman admired most, and in fact, whose profession she had chosen to pursue: the healing arts. Dr. Nathaniel Grey would have been pleased, if perhaps somewhat perplexed to see his granddaughter reading a copy of Cecil's _Essentials_ suspended in midair while she took notes with her right hand and held a sandwich in the left. For the hopeful Doctor-to-be Jean Grey, the power of mind over matter meant more than willing herself to stay awake for an all-night study session.

The other three students at Xavier's school were irredeemably middle or working class. The second of the elder two was the son of a nuclear physicist who'd fallen head-over-heels for a tree-hugging environmentalist and given up his research to run an organic farm outside Deerfield, Illinois. Too much radiation, perhaps, had altered the father's genes, producing a child with a bestial physique but a brilliant mind, and Henry McCoy could be found climbing the mansion walls at odd hours while muttering select quotes of Donne or Hawking, depending on his mood. One of the three younger boys wasn't American at all, but an Southern Italian whose father had moved to Genoa to work the docks, and died there in an industrial accident. The child had gone insane as a result of foreseeing the event - and not being able to stop it. He'd been graced (or cursed) to see past, present, and future in infinite variation, like a modern-day Nostradamus. It might have earned him a Special Study assignment from the Vatican, had Xavier not found him first. But Francesco Placido wasn't a prophet. He was a mutant.

All of them were mutants, including the headmaster himself. Charles Francis Xavier had been born with the ability to pick up the thoughts of those around him, even to control them. He was, arguably, the most powerful mutant on the planet.

But this isn't a tale about Charles Xavier. It's a tale about the third of those middle-class students - the one who'd been enrolled first of all. Son of an Air Force pilot and a second-generation Irish-Italian immigrant, he had, at seventeen, blasted a hole through the bathroom wall of his gym on prom night, and thus blasted his way into national attention and a blurb on the cover of _The National Enquirer_, right next to "Don Juan-Son: making love keeps me young says Nash Bridges hunk." Thankfully, he never saw that copy.

But Charles Xavier saw it. It was carried into him by his maid on his breakfast tray, right along with his morning grapefruit, toast, tea, and _The New York Times_. Twelve hours later, Xavier was knocking on the front door to a little ranch-style house in the San Diego burbs, 1569 Maple Lane. Thus, it was chance, yellow journalism, and a bored maid in the grocery checkout line that made Scott Summers the first student at Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. 

* * *

><p>Jean Grey finally spoke more than three words to the future Cyclops on the day he hit her car.<p>

With his racing bike.

Of the pedal-variety.

He was coming down the hill towards the mansion after his morning five-mile-ride, while Jean was headed out to Columbia's teaching hospital to do more lab research for her dissertation. It was an overcast Wednesday morning, not raining yet but looking to start soon, the air moist and heavy with a fine mist that had covered the windshield. Jean glanced down to hit the wiper blades once, to clear the glass. She looked at the wrong time. And he wasn't looking where he was going, and going far faster than he'd needed to be, caught up in the thrill of wind and speed. He saw her car too late.

He tried to stop but the momentum was too much, and it had rained all the previous day. Thin racing wheels slid in black New York mud. At least he had the presence of mind to get his feet out of the pedal clips and leap off before the bike smashed into the front of Jean's car. Thus, he didn't smash into the front of Jean's car with the bike. Instead, he landed on the hood and rolled over the top to smash into the ground on the other side. The impact knocked off his visor.

Jean Grey leapt out to kneel in the gravel and mud beside him, shouting, "Oh, my God!" over and over, even as he said, "Christ, I'm so sorry! I didn't even see you! Are you all right?" He winced in evident pain, but kept his eyes shut.

Jean was fine but her car's front end wasn't. And neither was Scott. His arm was bent at an angle that could only indicate it was broken, there were scratches all over him, and a tell-tale dribble of impact blood, forced out of nose and ears and even tear ducts. She could actually see his eyes as his visor was lying about five feet away, covered in muck. He tried to feel around for it with the arm that wasn't broken.

She grabbed it and said, "Don't move!" checking him to be sure nothing else had broken (his back, for instance). Nothing had. She forgot and asked him to open his eyes so she could check the pupils for concussion. Even lying on the muddy ground, hurt and suffering, he managed to laugh. "I don't really think you want me to do that."

It made her smile, but he couldn't see that with his eyes screwed up tighter than an old maid's disapproving mouth, so she said, "I think you're right. Here's your visor. Well, maybe you don't want it. It's kind of a mess."

He took it anyway, but didn't put it on, and she helped him to sit up. She knew who he was even if she'd never talked to him at length before. It would be hard to live at Xavier's new-born institute for 'gifted youngsters' (did she still qualify as a 'youngster' at almost twenty-six?) and not know Scott Summers, even if she'd only been there two months. It was even harder not to notice him, especially now, with a bare face.

It should be illegal for a boy to be that pretty.

_Down, Jean_, she told herself. _He's a kid_. And the closest thing the professor would ever have to a son. Definitely off limits.

So Jean Grey bundled Scott Summers into her Toyota, and his mangled bike into her trunk, then pointed the vehicle back towards the mansion and the infirmary in the sub-basement. She and Hank McCoy set the arm and cleaned him up while he apologized (profusely) all over again for wrecking her car and making her late. Once they got past the apologies and the setting of the arm, they laughed about the whole thing. There was a certain irony, Scott said, in managing to get into the first car wreck of his life (on a bike no less) by hitting a medical doctor, even if only one in training. At least he'd had instant first aid.

Jean never did make it to the hospital that day.

And five years later, Scott Summers would hit her car again - but that time on purpose, from behind, on a bike of a different variety, and without leaving a human-sized dent in it. In both cases, he got her attention.

Jean Grey referred to their love affair as an accidental interception of fate. 


	3. Phantoms in Westchester

Doctor Henry Philip McCoy was an impressive man.

Friends and strangers alike were daunted by the breadth of his vocabulary and his shoulders in nearly equal measure - a defensive linebacker caught in a lab coat. At first glance he didn't seem tall, but that may have owed to his perpetual slouch; when he stood up straight, he had to duck to clear most door lintels. The majority of his time was spent hunched over a computer, a book, a microscope, or lab utensils, and when he walked, usually lost in thought, he kept his eyes on his very big feet. He had a pair of granny glasses, a dimple in his chin, and a round face that, when he grew excited, shown like a polished apple. When he was irritated, the cheeks merely flushed hot pink, and the degree of his annoyance could be measured by the number of times he'd push his glasses up his nose. Just now, the count was at three, which meant he was moving from the merely irked into serious vexation.

"But Hank, you've got to help me. You _know_ her. What does she like?"

"And I reiterate - as I have stated already several times - I _have_ no suggestions to offer." He pushed his glasses up yet again (that made four), regarding Scott Summers with impatience. "Now please. I have tests to conduct." He turned back to the lab table littered with shiny-metal and dull-black equipment. The mansion's infirmary was his domain and Scott was an interloper.

Now, slumping down on a nearby stool, Scott drummed absently on the seat with the thumb of his good hand. He was finally out of the sling he'd worn since breaking his arm, but still wore a light cast, a dirty flesh shade contrasting badly with the smooth tan of his skin. Unlike McCoy, he was neither tall nor particularly broad, and his most distinguishing (still-visible) features were the high cheekbones he'd inherited from a Tlingit grandmother, and a mouth as full as a woman's. That mouth thinned when he became frustrated - as he was now. "Well, I've got to do _some_thing for her. I wrecked her car."

"I believe the best 'something' would entail paying to have it fixed," McCoy pointed out, then wished he hadn't.

Lips thinning even further, Summers looked away. "The professor is doing that."

Scott, of course, had little money of his own. Most everything in his life came on the professor's charity, and he was sensitive about that. McCoy had momentarily forgotten, and now sighed. The boy had an amazing ability to combine kicked-pup pouts with tight-jawed pride until one felt just miserable for him. "Look," McCoy said, "If you want to do something for her, why not take her to the opera?" But at that suggestion, Scott's expression blanched as stark as it might have at an announcement of immanent nuclear holocaust, and McCoy had to stifle a laugh. "You're not a fan of opera, I see."

"Rock opera, maybe. I always wanted tickets to _Jesus Christ Superstar_."

McCoy shuddered. "Andrew Lloyd Webber. Ugh. All pyrotechnics, no substance."

"Says who? It's cool music, and Ian Gillen sang the best Jesus. He was the lead for Deep Purple, y'know." Then Summers dropped his head back to regard the ceiling above with its banks of fluorescent lights, as if he might find the solution to his dilemma etched there. "I have to think of _some_thing." But this was vocalized more to himself than McCoy, who returned to his preparation of slides for the electron microscope. When Scott had been quiet for several minutes, Hank dared to hope that maybe he'd given up. Hank should have known better. Scott Summers was like a terrier when he got an idea in his head: persistent and mouthy. McCoy had completed only a second slide before Summers spoke again. "Maybe I could take her to see something on Broadway?" Then he sighed. "Yeah, right. Like _I _could afford tickets to Broadway!"

McCoy spoke without turning. "I could get tickets for you." Anything to make the kid go away. Usually, he enjoyed Scott's company, but just at the moment, he was more interested in the rate of nuclei decay in frog heart cells that had been subjected to a particular type of radiation.

Yet Scott had perked right up. "You _could_? You - I mean, you'd do that for me?"

Setting down his slide, McCoy turned finally. "I might." But he didn't believe in giving things away for free. People appreciated them more if they had to expend effort to acquire them, and if Summers had no money, he did have time - and young, strong muscles. "You have some knowledge of automobiles, do you not?"

Suspicious, the boy tilted his head and spoke slowly. "Yeah. My dad and I used to fix up old cars together. It was his hobby. He was a pilot. Air Force."

"So I've heard," McCoy replied, his voice dry.

That won a blink, then a smile. "I guess you have." The boy might be earnest, but at least he had a sense of humor.

"Ostensibly," McCoy went on, "vehicular care falls on my duty roster, but I rarely have time to devote to mundane upkeep." In truth, he found it unbearably tedious.

"And you want me to do it." It wasn't a question.

"_Permanently." _

Summers actually grinned. "If you can get us two seats to _Phantom of the Opera_ that aren't nose-bleeds, it's a done-deal, Hank."

McCoy drew himself up to his full height - which was a good six inches over Scott Summers. "My dear boy, I can assure you that not only will your nasal cavities remain sanguine-free, but you will find yourself on the floor within twenty feet of the stage." Though why anyone would want seats to that particular debacle of Webber's, McCoy couldn't fathom. Even the dated _Jesus Christ Superstar_ was preferable.

But Scott was ecstatic. "Holy shit! _Twenty feet from the stage?" _Hopping off the stool, he offered McCoy his hand. "The garage is mine. Thanks, Hank."

* * *

><p>Moira had kept house for the professor for over twenty years, and took advantage of her seniority on a regular basis to berate him for sleeping too little or forgetting his vitamins - but she was not a chef, she said, and anyone beyond herself, Xavier, the groom, and the gardener were too many to expect her to feed. So when Francesco Placido had come to live at the mansion six months ago, his widowed mother had come with him to be the new cook. Like any Italian woman worth her salt and pasta, she could feed a small army, or a handful of teenage boys, without breaking a sweat.<p>

Being neither male nor under twenty, Jean Grey usually tried to escape Valeria's maternal attention - and her carbohydrates - by waiting until the older woman had vacated the kitchen for early-afternoon siesta. Then Jean would sneak up from the lab to make herself lunch. One Wednesday afternoon in late April, she was making a BLT sandwich at the counter when Scott appeared at her elbow like one of the jin, a spirit of air and fire, waving a pair of tickets and sporting that enchanting grin. It gave him dimples, and gave her Very Bad Thoughts. At full-wattage, she thought he should have a Surgeon General's warning: 'Dangerous to female rationality.'

"_Phantom of the Opera_," he said, very obviously pleased with himself. "The Majestic. Two seats. Row nine - in the orchestra. Row _nine_."

She gaped. She'd have killed for those tickets. "Who's the lucky girl?"

"You."

Now she really did gape. Ever since they'd met concussively a month prior, he'd been orbiting her like a minor celestial body. She'd never had a little brother, had been the little sister instead, and rather enjoyed this new opportunity to play older and wiser. But she wondered if he may have gotten the wrong idea. "Scott, I - "

"Just say 'yes.' I owe you. I wrecked your car."

Lethal puppy seriousness. And he knew just how to beg without begging, too. She sighed. "All right."

The grin exploded onto his face once more. "Fantastic! Friday night, next week. Be ready to go at six." And he disappeared back out the kitchen door.

Jean shook her head. This was probably a mistake, she thought, fetching a diet Snapple out of the fridge from her personal stash; but if she had it to do again, she'd still have agreed. _She was going to see _The Phantom of the Opera_ on Broadway_, and bit her lip to suppress a very school girl squeal. So what if it was a bit of theatrical junkfood? Hank wasn't, she thought, the only one with the occasional taste for a Twinkie.

* * *

><p><em>This isn't a date<em>, Scott Summers told himself as he tried to avoid cutting his chin with a razor. _It's a bribe_. He was going out with Jean Grey because he had a pair of Broadway tickets that she wanted badly enough to consent to an eighteen-year-old escort.

But his hands still shook and his brain occasionally detoured into a youthful Neverland of what he wished could be, and he wound up cutting himself three times anyway, each a bright sting of pain like a stainless-steel admonishment. Finally, he dropped the razor into the sudsy water with a plop, and leaned over to brace palms on cool porcelain. "Get a grip. She's not going _with_ you. She's letting you drive."

At ten to six, he was pacing, all nervous, in the wood-paneled den: over to the pool table, around the Ficus tree, across the Persian runner in front of the door, past the black-leather couch, and back to the pool table. Francesco Placido, who was inelegantly sprawled over a florid-red Queen Anne seat, quit reading to watch him, and pulled thoughtfully on the cigarette he wasn't supposed to be smoking inside. "Chill out, Scott."

Summers glared, but Placido just extinguished his cigarette, stood up and fished in his back pocket. Dragging his wallet free, he took something from it and came over to slip it to Scott. A condom. Trojan-enz Spermicidal Lubricant. "_Non si sa mai." _Just in case.

Scott blushed and snorted at the sheer innocent bravado of the gift. "Yeah, right! Get a clue! She's twenty-six, Frank."

"_Così?" _So?

Frank Placido might be the most shut-mouthed Italian Summers had ever met, but in some ways, the younger boy was still a walking Latin cliché. Slapping the condom back into his friend's hand, he said, "Forget it. And I have one already, if I really need it."

Grinning, Placido put back the condom and spoke in a fluent if heavily accented English. "You will do okay, hey? She watches you, you know? I see her watch you." He leaned across to straighten Summers' tie absently, then slapped him on the upper arm. "_Bello e chic, mi amico! _Fine threads. You will knock her out, no?" Winking, he wandered back to the chair and returned to the book he'd been reading. Beppo Fenoglio's _Il partigiano Johnny_. Frank had a recent and passionate fascination with the Italian Resistance to Mussolini's fascists during World War II. He saw himself as a partisan born fifty years too late. In the end, Frank believed that the good guys in the white hats (or the blue bandanas) had to win.

Watching him read, something occurred to Summers and he stalked over to lean across the chair, one hand braced on the back. "You know something? You _see_ something, Frank?"

Placido glanced up, and Summers decided that he would cheerfully give ten years of his life for eyes like Frank's - if visible, of course. Deep-set and intense, and as black as midnight velvet under gypsy tarot cards. What fortune would he tell Summers?

"I see many things," he replied now. "I see enough to know to trust more what I observe. Men make their own futures, when they are brave enough. You go tonight. You be yourself. You two maybe start your own little history, eh? Maybe ten years from now, they talk about you. _Scott Summers e Jean Grey, la coppia perfetta_!" The perfect couple. He kissed his fingertips in illustration.

Snorting, Summers pushed himself away. He could never tell when Placido was being a jackass, a hopeless romantic, or prophesying - which was precisely the way Frank wanted it. But there was always something sad in his face, and wise, and sometimes, Scott wondered which of them was really the elder. Then again, if he could see the future in the kaleidoscope that Frank did, he might be old before his time, too.

A sound from behind alerted them, and they both turned. In the den doorway, Jean smiled. "Hi. Sorry I ran a little late."

"Wow! _Ciao, bellezza!" _Placido leapt to his feet to take her hand and kiss it, drawing her gracefully into the room to cover the fact that Scott was busy trying to pick up his jaw off the floor. Frank was a good friend to him sometimes. Dressed in simple dark satin that hugged all her curves, she stunned with pure elemental elegance and teased Scott's imagination with the slit high up her left side. His heart pounded and his tongue had cleaved to the roof of his mouth, yet she seemed perfectly at ease, laughing at Frank, then sniffing the air.

"You're smoking again, and inside, too. Bad boy." She shook a finger under his nose. "Don't come to me when you get cancer at forty-five, boy-o."

"Life is for enjoying, _Bella_. I like to smoke. My choice. There is too much sadness in the world to make more by worrying about tomorrow. I let the future take care of itself, no?"

He was lying through his teeth. No one in the mansion had more nightmares about the future than Francesco Placido. But it sounded good. Jean backed off, in part because she didn't feel like arguing with an Italian, even a shut-mouthed one, but also because he'd reminded her that he knew better than she did what his future held.

Summers had finally pulled himself together enough to approach, and she smiled at him - gentle, soft, but a bit impish at the edges. Her smiles always felt personal, a present just for the one smiled at. They made him stupid with longing: she was his Gloriana, his Faerie Queene

_Upon a great adventure he was bond,_  
><em>That greatest Gloriana to him gave,<em>  
><em>That greatest Glorious Queene of Faerie lond,<em>  
><em>To winne him worship, and her grace to have,<em>  
><em>Which of all earthly things he most did crave...<em>"You ready to leave?" she asked, jerking him out of mental meanderings.

"Uh. Yeah." Chivalrously, he offered her his arm. "Let's go see _Phantom_."

* * *

><p>Scott was helping Jean into the passenger side of a little red classic Porsche when the garage door opened to admit a metallic-orange Lamborghini Diablo Roadster, all sleek and wicked and going too fast for the tight fit, but the driver managed to avoid crashing into anything.<p>

Warren Worthington, of course. He sought speed in all things, be it on the road, at sea, or in the sky. But he could only drive that car out here; it wasn't street legal in New York City. Hopping out, he raised a hand in greeting. "Good God, man. Joe Cool in a suit and tie! Where are you off to? A funeral?" But he was grinning, and sauntered over to slap Summers' raised hand, gripping it tightly for a moment then bending to peer in the Porsche's passenger side. The wings that normally set him apart were strapped down and hidden beneath a tan, Egyptian-linen sport coat. "Jeannie - you look divine. Are you actually letting this clown take you somewhere?"

She didn't quite titter, but approached it at a glancing angle. Worthington had that effect on women, even those in their post-menopausal years. They lined up for his crooked smile and a flash from sea-blue eyes. He was lively, he was charming, he was rich, and he wasn't interested in getting serious. He held people at a distance by seeming to confide a great deal. Non-stop chatter. It took knowing him well to realize how little he ever actually said, and how little any of it reflected the mind of Warren Worthington, III. Arriving at Xavier's only a little after Scott, it was Warren who'd followed Scott about the mansion for the two months it had taken Hank to finish Scott's glasses, making sure that the younger boy didn't fall down staircases or bark his shin on the furniture. He'd seen Scott get frustrated with his blindness, and witnessed his fear that it might never change. And later, it was Scott who'd sat with Warren on the mansion roof the day that Warren's parents had taken off to Bucharest for the weekend and forgotten his twenty-first birthday. Scott had watched an angel cry. They'd never talked about those things, but words were Warren's shield. The real things in his life, the deep down things, he acknowledged in silence.

There were still times, however, that Warren's casual confidence annoyed Summers. This was one of them. "We're going to see _Phantom of the Opera_," he said.

Half laughing, Warren jerked up. "You're _serious_?"

"Yeah - so?" He started to add, 'Hank got me tickets,' but didn't. Let Warren assume he had his own means. "I wrecked her car. I wanted to do something nice. Why's it such a shock to think I might have a little culture?"

Warren waved his hands in amused surrender. "That wasn't what I meant. But _Phantom_ isn't exactly culture, Gamma Gaze. That's the show all the tourists go see, along with the performed-into-insipid-perpetuity _Cats_."

It was out before Warren considered either the timing, or who was sitting in the car below, overhearing the whole exchange. Scott Summer's face had blanched white in chill humiliation - which hadn't been Warren's intent. He'd just been shooting off his mouth again like he always did. "Uh - I'm just kidding, man."

Summers knew he wasn't. "Sure." And he shut Jean's door to walk around to the driver's side.

"Really," Warren insisted. "It's a popular musical for a reason." But he was digging himself in deeper and knew it. "Hey - you guys have a good time."

"Gee, thanks." Summers shut his own door and started the engine.

Sighing, Warren backed away and watched the car pull out of the garage. "You fucked up big time, asshole," he muttered to himself.

Inside the Porsche, one of those dreaded, awkward silences had descended. Scott drove with knuckles tight on the wheel and his jaw clenched, while Jean stared out the window at the passing countryside, bathed in the deep green-gold of a spring evening. Beneath the elegant arch of budding hardwoods, beds of tulips and hyacinth glowed, as shocking and vibrant as a schoolchild's drawing. Beside the front gate, cherries had shed the last of their blooms like a late spring snow squall, and up on the surrounding hills, green was coating the stick-art of New York winter forests. She caught a brown flash beside the road on the right.

"Doe," Scott said.

"Wow. This far in town?"

He shrugged, and a moment of tense silence followed before he muttered, "Sorry."

"For what?"

"For taking you to a _tourist_ show."

Turning her head, she smiled, finding him so young, and so earnest in his dignity. "Scott, don't be silly. I've only been to two shows in my life, both off Broadway, and I've never had seats this close. It'll be grand fun. I really appreciate the invitation."

The car had reached the lane's end, and he hit the brakes to glance both ways, then pulled out onto Route 126, past Harry's Hideaway Tavern, and headed for the Salem Center MetroNorth station. "It's the thought that counts, huh?" But it was said with sarcasm.

Eyes on the marching line of quaint New England suburban houses, she said with complete seriousness, "Yes. It is."

* * *

><p>While among the show's more infamous and expected artifices, the crash of the falling chandelier at the end of Act I still caused Jean to start in her seat and clutch at Scott's arm. Like Steven Spielberg, Andrew Lloyd Webber knew well the art of theatrical suspense. "Sorry," she said when she realized it had been his bad arm. Letting go, she straightened his sleeve as the lights came up and the red curtain dropped for the intermission.<p>

But Scott just laughed at her in a friendly way. "S'okay. The arm's mostly healed."

Rising, they escaped the gaudy, gilded glory of The Majestic's orchestra level to stretch their legs, and Jean made her way to the women's restroom, finding the inevitable line. The outer area was as shamelessly overdone as the rest of the place, sporting green marble counters under mirrors and banks of frosted make-up lights. Expensive baroque wallpaper bore tiny gold fleur-de-lis on a forest green background, and in the room's corner, two gold plush velvet couches gathered dust under fake silk greenery and grinning ceramic cherubs. She couldn't decide if she were more awed or more appalled by the decor, but the whole place certainly suited the grandiose melodies of Webber's gothic horror tale. She hummed a bit of "All I Ask of You," then caught herself and stopped. An operatic soprano she wasn't.

When she finished, she found Scott waiting patiently outside. A few passers-by glanced at the boy wearing sunglasses indoors at night, but didn't pause. These were the years before popular perceptions of mutants elicited irrational fear. To observers, he was just a young blind man in dark glasses and a nice pinstripe suit. "Ready to go back?" he asked.

"Sure."

The second act was more hard-hitting - and not because of the play's native pathos. In her excitement at the prospect of a ninth-row orchestra seat, Jean had overlooked the irony inherent in Scott Summers choosing _this_ particular story.

_"Why, you ask, was I bound and chained in this cold and dismal place? Not for any mortal sin, but the wickedness of my abhorrent face!"_

She'd been escorted to a theatrical performance about a man forced to mask his terrible visage by a man forced to mask his deadly eyes.

_"Pitiful creature of darkness - what kind of life have you known? God give me courage to show you that you are not alone . . . ." _

She thought long and hard about Scott's incessant attention over the past few weeks. She'd found it sweetly charming, occasionally annoying, and unarguably flattering. But perhaps, in her amusement at his schoolboy crush, she'd overlooked something more cardinal - he was lonely.

If she didn't know a great deal about his background, how his power had manifested was no secret, and being the architect of dramatic disaster at one's own senior prom could hardly be a pleasant memory. Jean had never gone to a prom, but had stopped regretting that some time ago. After a certain age, it ceased to matter. But for Scott, she wondered? Everything about him screamed a self-confidence learned early - from his casual ease in his skin to the strut he couldn't quite conceal. He'd been popular once, she thought. And while the shy, science-geek that still lived inside Jean might have found a certain poetic justice in what had happened to him, she'd mostly outgrown that, just as she'd outgrown regret. He'd been popular, but nothing about him made her think that he'd been petty or cruel. He just needed a little attention, and a friend.

Exiting the theater, they walked aimlessly down 44th Street in Times Square, side-by-side but not touching. The wind sang between buildings, whipping at her dress and jacket and blowing stray paper against the sides of brick buildings made sooty-dark with vehicle exhaust. "Would you like to get something to eat before we go back?" Jean asked him, and was delighted to see his face light up.

A little attention indeed.

"Sure! But" - he glanced down at her feet - "can you _walk_ far in those shoes?"

She smiled. "Don't worry. I spend ten-hour days on my feet in heels on a regular basis. Come on." She offered him her hand, friend to friend. He took it, and she dragged him off on a romp through Manhattan's midtown.

* * *

><p>Born and raised in smaller cities where neighborhood suburban sprawl had preempted east-coast high-rise urbanization, Scott had always found New York oppressive, even threatening in a vague and unspecified way. It was quirky, it was colorful, and it was brash. Even LA was a pale imitation, like a cheesy storefront facade in an old spaghetti western. Or perhaps familiarity had simply bred contempt, together with resentment at the annoying tendency others had to equate southern California with Los Angeles.<p>

He was from _San Diego_, dammit.

Now, he decided that he was fortunate to have a native New Yorker - well, more or less native- - to show him around. He was lost. Not directionally. He never got lost directionally: a function of his mutation. But he was lost at a more basic level. Where, he wondered, did one take a classy lady like Jean Grey for a good time on a Friday night?

_This isn't a date_, he reminded himself for the umpteenth time. It was . . . an excursion.

And Jean seemed more than willing to tell him where to take her. Or in truth, she took him. They wound their way through a revitalized Times Square, the Disneyland of tourist havens, her slender fingers hooked in his elbow so she could direct him better. He didn't realize it then, but that would come to define the nature of their paired existence: she steered while he pushed a path through the crowd. They passed myriad little tourist shops sporting "I New York" bumper stickers and key rings and shot glasses, Yankee's baseball caps and shirts, and assorted electronic equipment. One video store advertised: "XXX Features! ** Disney DVDs! ** Live Girls!" and that improbable juxtaposition bent Scott over double, laughing. Above them, the Jumbotron screen scrolled brightly with headline news tickers and expensive advertisements. The Disney theater was visible, the Virgin Megastore, the All-Star Café, and one of the stairwells down to the Times Square subway station.

And people. Even at this hour, people of every possible shape, size, and nationality crowded everywhere one looked - a seething, noisy human kaleidoscope in gaudy jewel-tone variety. 'The city that never sleeps.'

They browsed windows for a while, then she pointed off towards the Marriott Marquis visible to the north. "Let's go up to the View Restaurant. Forty-ninth floor. Have you been there yet? It rotates and you can see the entire city. It'll be my treat."

"Not been there, but lead on, Sacajewea. I'll follow you to the Pacific."

Laughing, she hauled him three blocks north on Broadway towards the hotel's spiking outline all brightly lit like an invitation to a plush existence beyond his wildest dreams. "The atrium is just outrageous," Jean told him, wrinkling her nose with amusement. "The kind of thing you have to see to believe. The hotel itself is one of those triple-A, four-diamond places. They have suites that go for three grand a night."

The idea that anyone could waste that kind of money on a bed struck Scott as either comedic or obscene. Then he remembered Warren, and reconsidered. It was no less comedic or obscene, but it was something Warren would do.

And Jean was right, he thought; the atrium left him gaping in dumb astonishment. "Thirty-eight stories," Jean whispered, and pulled him on, past lush greenery and modern smooth-line Italian furniture occupied by suits and power-skirts looking tired from a long day's travel, or laughing gaily from too much alcohol. Scott and Jean took the glass elevator up to a floor with shops and boutiques and a lounge amid the atrium trees. He got a coke, she got a glass of white wine, and they strolled the perimeter casually, window shopping. One display was dominated by a silver, blank-faced mannequin in ahideous pillbox hat and a wide-striped, blocky, skin-tight mini-dress that should have been fined for exceptional bad taste. Exchanging a glance, they broke up laughing, and a few hotel guests glanced over at them in surprised irritation. Embarrassed, they scuttled away, still giggling helplessly. When he could speak again, Scott said, "I'm almost afraid to ask the colors of those stripes."

The remark took Jean by surprise. "What do you mean?"

His sideways glance was quick and sharp. "I thought you knew. I can't see colors anymore."

And she should have known - she _did_ know, in fact. She'd read it in his medical file, but forgotten. It was an easy thing to forget, an easy thing to take for granted. "They were pink, orange and purple."

"_Together? _Ouch!"

"'Fraid so."

They ambled along for a few minutes more. She sipped her wine; he drank his coke, and once or twice, he walked to the edge of the interior atrium railing to lean out and look up, amazed by the spectacle like a child at the zoo. Finally, he said, "When I lived back in San Diego, there was this one mall with all the ritzy stores - Abercrombie and Fitch, Banana Republic, The Sharper Image, Williams-Sonoma, Cyrus' Imported Persian Carpets - that kind of thing." She smiled and nodded, refraining from telling him that everything he'd just named (carpet store perhaps excepted) was a chain for upper-middle-class shoppers harboring pretensions.

"We used to take off to the mall on weekends with a pair of Polaroids," he went on. "The assignment was to take pictures of ourselves either with or wearing stuff we'd never be able to afford, or wouldn't be caught dead in, in public. The team with the best stuff - really nice or really awful - won."

"Sounds like bribe-worthy material to me."

"Except we all had the dirt on each other, so it wouldn't've done much good."

"Too bad we don't have a camera." She glanced back in the direction of the boutique.

"Too bad the shop's not open. I'd dare you to put it on, even without a camera." That made her grin and poke him in the side. He flinched away, then asked, "You ever do anything like that, back in high school?"

"Nope. I was a stick-in-the-mud."

"What? You? I don't believe it."

"I was." She nodded solemnly and took another sip of her wine.

"I still don't believe it."

"Honest. Cross my heart and hope to die." She made the appropriate gesture. "A big, tall, nerdy Amazon with a pony-tail, glasses only one step up from horn-rims, and a flat chest."

The direction of his gaze dropped involuntarily to her bust line - a little meager still but she'd since discovered the wonders of a push-up bra. She fell silent, remembering. When she spoke again, her voice was soft, and almost lost to the click-clack of her heels on marble flooring. "I was put in a sanitarium for the first time when I was ten. Catatonic. I didn't leave until I was fourteen, and then only thanks to the professor. But I had to go back a few times later when the voices in my head got to be too bad. I'm a latent telepath, Scott, as well as a telekinetic." She paused, adding simply, "I didn't get out much, in high school."

Scott remained silent, afraid that anything he said would sound trite and hollow. Yet it wasn't pity that stirred him, or even fear at her potential ability to read his mind - he was accustomed to Xavier, and he trusted Jean's ethics. Rather, he wanted to show her, all at once, everything she hadn't experienced: how to TP a house on Halloween, how to shoot pool in a game hall, how to sneak into the gym after hours to put Crisco on the ballcourt, how to drop Milk Duds from the cinema balcony onto the unsuspecting patrons below. "Do you still hear them? The voices?" he managed finally.

"No. The professor suppressed my telepathy entirely, in the end."

"Will it come back?"

"He'll release the blocks when I'm ready to handle it. He's says I'm very sensitive." He'd said, in fact, that she might one day be stronger than he was. That thought frightened her in the dark of the night. "He thought it might be a good idea for me to learn to use this first." And she stopped walking to extend her wine glass and draw her fingers away just a bit, holding it up by the power of her mind alone - but ready to catch it if she lost control. She still found it easier to shove a couch across a room than to hold up a simple goblet.

"Jean!" Scott hissed, glancing around nervously.

"Don't fret so. No one can see what I'm doing; my hand is in the way. Besides, haven't you noticed that others see only what they want to see? _Normal_ people can't hold wine glasses with their minds, so unless I wave the truth under their noses, no one will notice." The last sentence came out more brittle than she'd intended, and she looked up at him, catching her own reflection in the mirror red of his distinctive lenses. They were his Mark of Cain, and she flushed. Who was she to lecture him? At least no one looked at her twice, walking down a street.

But he said, "It's okay," as if he were the telepathic one, able to follow her embarrassed thoughts. She wished she could read his eyes. She'd wondered before what they looked like behind red, but it had been a cursory curiosity. Now, her researcher's inquisitiveness pressed forward with new force.

"Do you have any pictures of you, before those?" She pointed to the glasses, and his eyebrows shot up over the top of them. Realizing abruptly how her question might sound, she slapped her free hand over her mouth. "God. How rude. Sorry."

But her anxiety just amused him, and he laughed. In his experience, the glasses bothered others more than they bothered him - the obvious thing everyone tried not to notice, like crutches or a wheelchair. But they had given him back his sight, and he hadn't had them long enough yet to grow to hate them. "No need to apologize." He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket. "Actually, I used to have a picture of me with my brother and parents. I don't think I took it out." Opening the wallet, he flipped through it. "Yup, here it is. It's a few years old but . . . you can get the basic idea." Slipping the picture free, he handed it over.

She took it with a smile, this piece of his past, and moved to find better illumination from the high track lights overhead, studying the photograph intently. It was one of those Christmas portraits that families had made every few years, and which required fifteen takes to get a single shot where someone's eyes weren't shut or expression wasn't peculiar. In this, she thought Scott's father looked stiff and uncomfortable in his Air Force dress blues, but his mother was a pretty woman, photogenic with long cat-eyes and fair hair that had probably come more from a bottle than nature at her age, but she possessed the cream skin to support it, and her younger son had clearly inherited it. A brassy-bronze under studio lights. Jean let her gaze move finally to Scott. Even standing in the back with his father, she could see the bright blue of his uncovered eyes. Deep-set and sparkling, they matched his electric smile, but they were sharp, too, focused in a way that suggested intelligence. She looked up at him now, standing a few feet off and clearly watching her from behind those shades. Glasses made him appear older and more serious, and enigmatic, but they also concealed the piercing nature of his regard. He didn't miss much, she thought, and wouldn't soon forget that. Walking back, she handed over the photo. "You look like your dad." That made him grimace as he refit the picture into its thin plastic sleeve. "I take it that's not a good thing?"

"We don't exactly get along."

"Being a mutant was a problem?"

"Partly." He looked off, his face expressionless in an effort to contain something more volatile. Scott Summers never knew how to explain the strained love that bound him to his father: it was both as old as the hills and as new as the lightning in his eyes, an emulation and resentment all twisted by nature's unexpected surprises. Yet he knew, down in his heart, that his father still cared about him. It was simply easier for them both to maintain that care if they saw as little of each other as possible. Too close a proximity yielded shouting matches on everything from Clinton's economic policies towards China to the fine imposed on Newt Gingrich.

"I guess you could say I was the black sheep, even before these." He tapped the glasses. "It doesn't always take weird powers and trashing your high school to quarrel with your family. Sometimes all you have to do is register Democrat in a family of Republicans." But he offered that confession wryly - as humor, not an admonition. A gift of the personal in exchange for her earlier admission about her years in a sanitarium. Understanding, she smiled back faintly and they walked on, side by side but no longer casually touching, as much separated as bound by awkward revelations and the deep blue silhouettes of old monsters in the closet.

* * *

><p>They went up to the rotating restaurant atop the Marriott to overdose on caffeine with Death-by-Double-Chocolate cheesecake and espresso. Jean flirted with the maitre d', who, suitably flattered, found them a little table on the outer rim by the wide banks of windows. There, they could look out over the city at night, lit in white and yellow and neon red like an earthbound reflection of the sky overhead. Constellations made from the Manhattan streets, a Zodiac pattern of high urbanity. Ever the gentleman, Scott held the chair for Jean, and she rewarded him with a smile. Then he asked her questions about her doctoral research and listened quietly to answers he didn't understand. He just wanted to watch her talk. Animated by her passion, she sparkled, spilled golden charisma onto the table like honey, catching fast whomever happened to be watching: Scott himself, a middle-aged Asian businessman at the table to their right, a passing waiter. It was a beauty that owed nothing to the flesh.<p>

"Are you afraid," he asked her at one point, "that people might find out you're a mutant, and ignore your research, call you biased?"

"All the time," she replied, using her fork to scrape the last streaks of chocolate sauce from her plate. "But I have to do it." Looking up, she pinned him with eyes as dark as the chocolate. "I have to. It's just . . . . " She stopped, unsure how to explain. "It's this . . . need. I have to understand where we come from and why. What made us this way? Can we track it, map it, like the rest of the human genome? Can we predict who and how and what? I want to _know_, Scott. There is so much still to _know_!"

Smiling a little sadly, he said, "I wish I had something I was that devoted to."

"You'll find something." She played with her fork, licking off the chocolate. "You've lots of time still, to decide."

"Maybe."

After they'd finished, they left the hotel to make their way north to Rockefeller Center where they found a band who had set up for an impromptu concert on the plaza. The musicians proved more proficient than the average garage band, but otherwise, they could be categorized as an undistinguished pop clone of Hootie and the Blowfish. Upon seeing the bass player, however, Scott grew unusually animated, even for him, and lapsed into mostly incomprehensible mutterings on the man's vintage imported 4001 maple-top Rickenbacker bass, circa Paul McCartney's Beatles phase. Jean not only couldn't tell a bass from a guitar, it took her a good five minutes to realize he was talking about an _instrument_. Finally, she interrupted to ask, "How do you know all that?"

"What?"

"That . . . technical stuff." She wriggled her fingers in an imprecise but amused illustration. "Model numbers and things."

It made him smile. "Bass players are kinda gear fanatics."

"You play? I mean, you're a musician? Like in a band?"

"Yeah, like in a band." Then he looked away. "Or I used to."

"So find another band."

He tapped his glasses. "Yeah, right."

"You never know, Scott. It's been my impression that musicians usually fall on the liberal side."

He shrugged and deflected any further questions by asking her if she'd like to dance. She agreed, and they wove out into the plaza crowd, forgetting for a while the differences in their ages and backgrounds in the rhythm of a drum line. Sound and movement united them. When they finally slipped away, Jean let Scott put an arm around her shoulders, to guide her through the press of people. His warmth against her side felt natural, felt right, and looking over at him, she wondered, fleetingly, about future possibilities.

Then she dismissed that line of thought.

He was eighteen. She was twenty-six. Some chasms were simply too wide to leap.

But Scott Summers wasn't inclined to be daunted by such things as generations gaps. With brash, youthful zeal, he decided that very night that he was going to marry Jean Grey.

* * *

><p><strong>Notes:<strong> The quote comes from Edmund Spenser's _The Faerie Queene_, with some slight modification of the medieval lettering.


	4. La Coppia Perfetta

When Francesco Placido was ten years old, he'd fallen prey to a particularly virulent strain of meningitis. It had been winter in the little hamlet of Ginostra, one of two settlements on the volcanic isle of Stromboli in the Eolian string running northeast from Sicily. Even Odysseus had found the place difficult to escape. It had no running water or electricity, depending instead on solar energy and imperfect cell phone reception. Thirty-seven people and eleven donkeys had called it home then, with Francesco being the only one under the age of fifteen (including the donkeys). His father had worked for Siremar, the local transport company. It was a tourist site, intended to preserve the natural beauty of the volcano, and with tourists and traffic at their seasonal low, the first aid clinic had reduced its staff to one nurse and a medic, who had taken advantage of a break in the weather to go that very morning to nearby Lipari to fill prescriptions.

The nature of meningitis had meant a rapid onset. At eight that morning, young Francesco had been racing off to help his father at the world's smallest formal port (it accommodated only three boats). By ten, he'd been sent home to his mother with a fever and a rash, and lay torpid on the family couch under a window where he could hear the quiet pulse of the sea. By twelve, he'd been delirious, and his mother had yelled for a neighbor to bring a wagon so she could get the child to the clinic. Less than an hour later, Francesco had begun seizing and a wire was sent to the medic on Lipari, but it took time to return from the other island, even by Aliscafo hydrofoil, so the man had arrived at the clinic only to declare the boy dead at 1:26 pm.

For a normal human child, that might have been the end, but Francesco's latent X-gene had saved his life by activating early. The virus that had inflamed the lining of his brain and spinal column had also caused his mutant gift to manifest before puberty's traditional onset. Twelve minutes after he'd been pronounced, while his mother Valeria wailed in the outer office and the doctor notified the father by cell phone, the clinic nurse had come rushing out to say that the boy was coming around. Dropping the phone without hanging up, the doctor had raced back into the exam room to find - past any expectation or hope - Francesco Placido with his eyes open. "I'm thirsty," he'd said.

From that day on, in the hamlet of Ginostra, he'd been called Lazarus, but as with the Biblical resurrected, his evasion of death had come with a terrible price, though it would take years and a move to Genoa before he understood that his almost-magical knack for predicting things would include foresight of his own father's demise. He was ten when he regained his life, and fourteen when he lost his mind.

Now, at not-quite-seventeen, and perfectly sane, he sat on the steps of the courtyard gate to Xavier's mansion and waited for what he knew would be the third most important event of his life (the second had been losing his father). Fortunately, this time, it involved no one's death.

"Hey, man - it's Saturday. What are you doing up already?"

Frank looked around to find Scott Summers standing behind him. The other boy had apparently just gotten out of the shower; his hair was wet still and he looked freshly shaved. He held a mug of coffee in one hand. Frank had finished his own some time ago and was using the cup as a makeshift ashtray. "That is so gross," Summers said, wrinkling his nose and seating himself beside Frank on the step.

"Would you rather that I littered the drive?"

"No, I'd _rather_ you didn't smoke at all."

Smiling, Frank brushed the nails of his right hand up his neck, the Italian hand gesture for, among other things, 'I don't give a shit.'

It made Summers laugh and shake his head. "You're such a crazy Wop. And you didn't tell me what you're doing up at this hour. It's not even noon yet. You never get up before noon if you can help it."

"The professor, he comes back today."

"Yeah, so?"

But Placido didn't reply to that immediately. Instead, he lit his fifth cigarette of the morning and inhaled deeply, held the smoke until it burned, until he could feel the nicotine charge his blood, then let it out in a rush. The breath of a sibyl before prophecy. "He will bring us someone new."

Summers' gaze was intense behind red quartz. "Who?"

"You ask her name? I do not know. That is not how it works. Her hair is white."

"She's old?"

"No. She is younger than me." And Placido returned to his smoking, satisfied that he had said enough to deflect further questions. They sat in easy silence then as the summer sun beat down on the courtyard flagstones and baked the boys into medium-well indolence. Pulling off his shirt and pillowing it under his head, Summers stretched out to sun himself like a cat. He'd probably pay for the indulgence later with a massive headache or extra hours at practice to ease the pent-up solar energy that his body stored and released again as optic blasts. But just then, he lived in the moment, and the sun was pleasant on his bare flesh.

Out of the corner of his eye, Placido caught Jean exit the den out into the courtyard, but spotting the two of them lounging on the steps, she moved back into the shadow of the doorway. He turned his head and she raised a finger to her lips, shutting the door behind her. He might have chalked it up to a desire to avoid her shadow, but knew better. If Scott wasn't following her around the mansion, before long she turned up somewhere public, reading a book or computer printout while pretending that she wasn't making herself easy to find.

"_La storia di Scott e Jean_," he muttered _sotto voce_.

Perhaps five minutes later, he heard a soft crack and glanced up to find the face of Jean Grey grinning down at him from the window above. The gated courtyard steps lay half under an arch that opened onto the main drive. Above was a narrow, second-story servants' pass joining the east and west mansion; they used it these days as a short cut to avoid walking all the way around to the building's rear to cross over. Narrow, wooden-framed windows marched along the outer wall, and Jean had opened one directly over them. She held a big plastic Tupperware bowl, and waved Frank clear. Very carefully, he moved, but Summers was so far out of it, he didn't even stir. Jean lowered the bowl with her mind until it was less than five feet above Scott's chest, then tipped it upside down.

Little cut squares of refrigerator-cold Jell-O with fruit and marshmallows landed in a verdigris splat all over Scott's chest and belly. Bellowing, he arched up in shock and Frank let out a bark of laughter as Jean slammed the window shut above. The plastic bowl, forgotten, slapped down on the Jell-O littered flagstones beside Scott.

"Godfuckingdamn!" Summers yelled, slapping and swiping at the green mess all over his stomach as if he'd been covered in snakes. "That sneaky _bitch_! She's going to pay for this!" But Frank could hear an edge of real delight behind the indignation, and laughing almost too hard to breathe, leaned up against the wall behind him.

Naturally, it was at that very moment when the professor's dark limousine pulled through the front gate and made its way up the drive. Scott and Frank watched it approach, Scott still shirtless and decorated in bits of pineapple, orange, and green-stained marshmallow. When the driver had stopped the car, one tinted back window slid down. Xavier grinned out at them, then spoke to a shadow in the car beside him. "And these, I am sorry to say, are two of your fellow students. I buy them books and buy them books, but all they do is eat the covers off." There was a sound of distinctively female laughter from inside the limousine, and Frank thought he caught a flash of white hair. The present fractured into myriad futures, all edged with lightning. His vision tunneled and he heard Scott yell, "He's zoning again!" before he blacked out.

* * *

><p>"I call, and raise all of you another quarter."<p>

Ororo Munroe, the white-haired object of Frank Placido's visions (not to mention his more heated dreams), tossed thirty-five cents into the pot at the center of Warren's bed. Due to his wings, Warren had a king-sized bed, and it was the only one large enough to accommodate all four of the younger students for poker.

"No way," Summers announced now, folding his cards face down on the quilt. "Too rich for my blood. The woman cheats."

"Prove it," she said, but without obvious heat. In fact, she did cheat, but was accomplished enough at it to be arrogant rather than defensive. She had survived on the streets of Nairobi through a mix of thievery, cons, and picking pockets. She had skills at deception that the other three could only postulate existed.

Grumbling, Summers sipped from a contraband can of Heineken. There was a loaded cooler in the corner that Warren had smuggled in; this beer was Summers' fourth. In fact, alcohol could be directly blamed for the current mutation of five-card-stud into strip poker. Fold and lose one's money, or call, lose the hand, and lose an article of clothing along with the pocket change. So far, Summers had lost both his shoes and socks, his watch and his high school ring, but was in better shape than his two male classmates. Warren was down to jeans and underwear, and Frank had on only European-style bikinis.

Now, sighing, Frank folded, too, and flopped back on the bed. "I told you," Summers said, "she cheats." Ororo had lost only her earrings and sandals, and Summers was convinced that was simply to make her cheating look less obvious.

"And I said you must prove that I cheat." But she wasn't looking at Scott; she was looking at Warren. "Are you in?"

He considered the pot, considered his hand, considered her, and folded as well. "Better to keep my clothes and lose some cash."

"Wimps," she told them and raked in her draw, then laid down her cards for them to see. All she'd had was a pair, and not a high one. Two sevens.

"Goddamn!" Warren yelled, tossing his own hand. Scott picked them up and turned them over to reveal a straight.

Ororo shook her head. "I told you. I do not cheat. But I do bluff."

"You cheat, too," Summers insisted, gathering all the cards for his turn to deal.

In the end, Ororo did win the game, though they got her down to her bra, at least. But she had an opportunity to compare circumcised with uncircumcised, and pronounced Frank the best endowed of the three. When, later, she chose to go out with him, she claimed it had nothing to do with his assets below the belt. Warren claimed not to believe her. And Jean never heard about that particular poker game until, many years later on the eve of her wedding, she was shocked to discover that her teammate had seen her husband-to-be in all his glory before she had.

* * *

><p>"Hi."<p>

Ororo looked up from where she was trying to read a history assignment in the courtyard sun on a warm, June afternoon. The yard was expensively landscaped, and populated with good Greco-Roman imitation sculptures and pseudo-damaged Ionic columns. Ororo shaded her eyes until she could make out the person who'd spoken to her: the auburn-haired medical student with the expensive shoes and delicately-arched eyebrows, the one whose name her schoolmate, Scott Summers, couldn't keep out of his conversations.

Jean Grey.

Without being invited, the older woman sat down beside Ororo on the bench, pulling up her legs to wrap arms about them and rest her chin on her knees - a posture reminiscent of slumber-party confidences, although Ororo had never been to a slumber party in her life, to recognize it. Nonetheless, she could recognize the attempt at friendly familiarity and her time on the street had made her suspicious of it. "Is there something you wanted?" she asked.

"Oh, I don't know. I just thought we might have a chat." Jean grinned. "You're the only other woman here. Female bonding." Ororo blinked, startled by that notion. As near as she could tell, she had next-to-nothing in common with Jean Grey to bond over, and it never occurred to her that Jean might be practicing something as simple as kindness. She hadn't experienced much kindness in her sixteen years. When she didn't immediately reply, Jean sat up to run a hand through her hair. "The professor introduced us, but we haven't had a chance to talk much - get to know each other."

"That is because you are usually conducting your research in the lab below, or at the hospital."

It was offered as an observation, not a rebuke, but already feeling thrown off her stride, Jean took it as the latter. Over such small misunderstandings are wars begun, and the power of first impressions lent this one additional impact. It didn't begin a war, even of the minor, interpersonal variety, but it did succeed in killing any real chance at sisterhood between the two women, although both proximity and familiarity would eventually build a bond based on common causes and shared experience - a friendship of sorts, but stemming from necessity, not preference. Jean Grey and Ororo Munroe would always be closer to others at the mansion than to each other.

Now, realizing that she had said something wrong - but still suspicious and skeptical - Ororo closed her history book to set it aside, her movements neat and precise. "You are also a mutant, I presume?"

"Yes."

"What is your power?"

One hand releasing her knees, Jean pointed to Ororo's book, levitating it a few inches off the bench. Ororo neither started nor permitted herself to appear impressed. "I'm a telekinetic," Jean said with a smile. "What's yours?"

Turning her face to the sky, Ororo let the mist roll over her eyes, making them as unnaturally white as her hair. A wind whipped up and the cirrus-scudded blue overhead grew obscured by boiling gray clouds, like a time-lapse film of an approaching storm. Jean gasped. "My tribe, in Kenya, called me a weather witch," Ororo said, lowering her chin. The wind had lifted her long hair like a bird's wings and the clouds above hid the sun until, with a flick of her wrist, Ororo dissipated the buildup as easily as she'd called it, and as quickly. She didn't tell Jean how much the whole display had cost her; she'd meant it to impress.

It worked. Jean sat up. "That's . . . amazing," she said. But before she could say more, an upstairs window slammed open and Scott Summers leaned out with Frank Placido behind him.

"Ro!" Scott scolded. "What are you trying to do? Paint a big X on the mansion with magically appearing and disappearing thunderheads? Christ, woman, show a little common sense!"

Ororo casually flipped him off as Jean waved a hand. "My fault, Scott. I asked her what she could do." It was Jean's nature to smooth over conflict.

"A little fog next time, maybe?" Frank said from behind Scott. Like Jean, he was more inclined to offer solutions than rebukes.

Ororo and Scott ignored them both, continuing to glare at one another a moment until finally, Scott's lips turned up and he flipped her off in return before pushing himself back inside and shutting the window. Embarrassed, Jean shook her head and turned to Ororo, intending to offer some kind of apology, only to realize the white-haired girl was half-laughing.

And a strange hot flash skittered under Jean's skin, uncomfortably like a jealousy she shouldn't feel. She wasn't interested in Scott that way. "His dimples make up for his lack of manners," she said, her tone teasing and suggestive. "He's cute, don't you think?"

Ororo glanced at her and spoke with the same bluntness she had before. "Frank is better looking, but Scott is more honest. I respect that. He isn't afraid of me."

"And Frank is?"

"Oh, yes. Terrified." She shook her head. "He is very silly sometimes." But Ororo was secretly flattered by the intensity of his infatuation.

Jean plucked a leaf from one of the courtyard bushes and studied it in her fingers. "Men are often silly creatures." Then she asked, abruptly, "Do you like him?"

"Who? Frank?"

"No, Scott."

_Ah, ah, ah,_ Ororo thought. Frank had told her - insisted, in fact - that Scott's interest in Jean Grey wasn't entirely one-sided. She hadn't believed him.

"Yes, I like Scott," she said now, just to watch the older woman's eyes widen and her face go still in an effort to hide her disappointment. It was cruel, but amusing, and Ororo was not above being occasionally cruel in small things. "I like him very much as a friend. But Frank has asked - again - to take me to dinner on Friday, and I think this time, I shall go. But I shan't tell Frank that just yet. And you mustn't, either."

Grinning, Jean gave Ororo's arm a playful pat. "You're wicked. But I hope you have a wonderful time. Frank really is quite sweet."

* * *

><p>The set of experiments that Jean was currently running with vaX receptors and stress triggers had to be done sequentially, from start to finish, and so, required her to be awake and coherent for twenty-eight hours straight, a feat that - at twenty-six years - did not come as easily as it once had. She managed on coffee, BLT sandwiches, and her insatiable hunger for knowledge. It was her fate to be dissatisfied with ignorance - hers or anyone else's. To her, the only thing worse than ignorance was a casual complacency in it. Like winter snow, it buried the true outline of things in white silence.<p>

When her experiments were done at last and the results stored with doubled backups, she dragged herself upstairs to bed, sleeping for sixteen hours until a little before ten the next morning. Waking finally, bleary and befuddled, she showered and dressed, and considered getting coffee. But even the mere thought of more of the black bean made her queasy, so she opted for tea and toast instead at the little eat-in kitchen table. It sat near a door that led out onto the rear porch, once the servant's entrance. The day was cool for late June, nice enough to leave the door open and enjoy a breeze through the screen. Limpid gold morning sun played over the yard beyond, casting indistinct shadows, and triplet bees hummed among the chamomile bushes in the herb garden.

"Hey! You're awake!"

Startled, Jean jerked around to find Scott in the kitchen doorway. "Hey yourself," she answered. He took that for an invitation and ambled across black and white tile to plop down on a vinyl seat across from her. It squeaked under his weight. He was carrying a pair of cameras.

"Frank said his mom said you were up. How'd it go - the experiments? Did you get the results you needed?"

"I got results, yes, but I didn't need any _particular_ results. That's not how research works, Scott. Not good research. You start with the _data_, the evidence, then you build your hypothesis from that data. You don't start with a hypothesis and go looking for data to support it. Bad science. That was one of the first things Dr. Banner and Hank drilled into my head."

Laughing, he held up a hand. "Okay, okay. I surrender! I just meant in general." Then he brought up the other hand, the one holding the cameras. These, he set gently on the table in front of her. "I wanted to be sure you got what you needed, so you could take a day off."

She picked up one of the cameras. They were of the drugstore cardboard disposable variety. "What on earth are these for?"

Awarding her the grin she'd come to think of as 'pure mischief,' he said, "Remember what I told you about going to the mall and taking pictures with the worst and best stuff?"

It required a moment for her to place when he'd told her any such thing - and, thus, what he was talking about. Then she remembered: at the Marriott Marquis, when they'd been walking around the atrium and had seen that godawful dress. She lifted one of the cameras. "Your idea of a day off is a bad-taste-in-clothes hunt?"

"Yeah - you, me and Warren, against Ororo, Frank and Hank."

Both her eyebrows climbed. "And they agreed to this?" What she meant was, Hank agreed to this? And what she didn't know was that Scott had bullied the rest of them into it because he'd felt that she needed a vacation from her work. Even Hank had been unable, or unwilling, to argue against that, so they'd agreed to his scheme.

"Yeah," he said now. "They think it'll be fun. We were just waiting for you to wake up."

She should have said no. She should have explained that she needed to go back down to the lab and evaluate the results of her research, her work, her passion. She had no time for frivolity, and opened her mouth to tell him as much - then shut it. Scott wore that earnest expression she found so impossible to refuse, eyebrows raised a little and the eagerness shining out of him as if his skin were translucent. Rising, she finished her nearly cold tea in one swallow, then set the cup down on the tabletop with the solid thumb of a decision made. "Then let's go hunting Tacky. But forget those cheap things. We need _videocameras_."

So the six of them hit the Westchester Mall in White Plains, with its skylit ceiling and marble floors, specially commissioned sculptures, fountains, and four stories of shops, counting the food court. They stayed until the doors closed at nine, and returned to the mansion with six tapes of excruciating footage, which they played on the den TV over popcorn, coke, and much ribbing. The professor acted as judge, his final pronouncement being that both teams had execrable taste, but that Scott's team won on the basis of a single, particularly frightful dress found in the Neiman Marcus formal-wear department and modeled by Jean. It seemed to have been constructed from purple velvet and silver semi-transparent scraps stitched together like a checkerboard quilt, with peek-a-boo slits over the belly-button, upper cleavage, and lower back, and a great purple and silver bow just above the ass to complete the Elvira Ensemble. When Scott and Jean were married ten years later, that old tape found its way to the wedding reception, and though the professor staunchly denied any involvement, he remained the primary suspect.

* * *

><p>"Try again, Jean. Concentrate."<p>

Lowering her chin, Jean Grey focused once more on the three laces lying like limp noodles on the professor's desk. Her assignment was not simply to lift all three simultaneously, but to braid them, as well.

The laces rose up and swayed towards one another like three drunk dancers, wavered, twisted and tangled, then dropped back onto the desk. "Dammit! I'm never going to get this!"

"You won't if you've already decided that you won't," Xavier told her with amused patience. "You said the same thing, as I recall, when you were overcompensating and throwing all three of them at the ceiling, a week ago."

Sighing, she rubbed her forehead, all damp with exertion, and he watched her fondly. If she only knew how much potential he saw in her. He loved all his students for their own unique virtues. Frank, with his quiet wisdom that went far beyond his years; Ororo, for the strength of will that had made her a survivor; Hank, for his enthusiastic brilliance; Warren, for his desire to matter in the world for reasons beyond his bank account; and Scott, for a bedrock strength that the boy himself didn't fully recognize yet. But Jean was the one most like him, and not just for the burden of telepathy that they both shared. She, too, had been sheltered from the world by others' false perceptions of her fragility. But she was his dragonfly child, too fast to catch and crush. She soared high in a glitter-bright buzz over those who sought to contain her.

"Do it again?" she asked now. He just smiled. She already knew the answer to that.

* * *

><p>When Ororo and Frank were alone together, they tended to converse in French peppered with English idioms - not to be covert or recondite, but because each found that language more amenable. Speaking French would hardly have made their conversations secret, in any case. The professor spoke the language fluently, as did Warren, having spent a year overseas in Provence after high school. Jean had taken French in college, and Hank collected languages. He often said that he could get himself in trouble in eight different countries in their native tongue. In fact, the only person at the mansion who <em>couldn't<em> understand their franglais was the one currently standing in the den doorway, listening. Scott Summers. Hearing him enter, they turned as one, and Summers thought that he had never seen two people more alike, yet not - white and black in ways that went well beyond their skin. A mutant Oscar and Felix.

He was gentle; she was hard. He was inclined to see the best in people; she remained cynical. He was a romantic, she a realist. He slept late; she got up early. He preferred the city though he'd been born in a hamlet of thirty-seven people; she loved the country, though she'd come from a city of two-million. He smoked like a chimney; she hated cigarettes. Yet at some cellular level, they understood one other. He was her sanctuary, her home, her peace.

Rejected by her tribe as a witch, she had fled to the streets of Nairobi, where she'd made a living by cat burglary and picking pockets - a child of the savanna forced to live in an urban jungle. She'd learned English from cartoons and B-grade horror flicks, which she'd watched on a filched RCA ten-inch television that she'd kept in her personal basement hole in an old business building on the Kiriyaga Road, not far from the river. It was an infamous part of town, the kind tourists were warned away from, where business was conducted in the clichéd tiny smoke-filled rooms with low light and even lower honesty - the part of town where bad things happened to young, pretty girls unless those girls commanded the lightning. So Ororo had learned to keep a low profile, and her thoughts, opinions, and emotions to herself, especially among strangers. They were not her tribe, and her tribe hadn't wanted her, in any case. So she had lived without a people, rootless - a terrible fate, but an increasingly common one in Africa. Francesco, too, had learned that some things were better left unsaid, and so he respected her silences, which inclined her to break them with him more often.

Now, Summers sauntered into the den, hoping he wasn't interrupting something private, but the two lovebirds had out a math book and were apparently working on some problem. Seeing him, Frank made an expansive gesture. "Just the one we need!" And he shoved the book across the coffee table towards Scott. "Sit down, sit down. Explain this to us."

"What is it?"

"We are trying to find the lowest common denominator," Frank said. "She does not understand the fractions, and you know how numbers and _I_ get along. I am no good at explaining this."

_She doesn't understand fractions? _Summers thought, but then bit his tongue. Maybe he could do calculus, but he couldn't carry on a conversation in three different languages. In the end, which of those was more practical? Dragging over a chair, he settled in to look at the problem. "Okay, it's really not that hard. First, you've got to break down the numbers themselves." He took the pen Frank handed him and set about writing. "Let's see - this set is an 8, 12 and 18. What times what, gives you 8?"

"Two times four," Frank said, "but I tried that."

"Yeah, but you stopped there. You have to break down the 4, too. You have to break them all down to numbers that aren't divisible. It's really kind of fun, like solving a puzzle or something . . . " And he was off. They listened intently as he took them through the process, finally rendering an answer of 72. "See? It's not complicated. You just have to take it one step at a time, and not get lost in the equation. Let's try the next one: 9, 16, and 20. Okay, factor down the 9."

"Wait," Ororo said. "Why is this important?"

"Well, you can't add or subtract, multiply or divide fractions until you get them down to a common denominator."

"But why? I do not understand why it even matters."

That brought him up short and he straightened, staring off into space for a moment and pondering why it did matter. He might enjoy the puzzle aspect of it, but not everyone was a math geek.

"Come on." Rising, he led them out of the den, down the main hallway and into the mansion's industrial kitchen. They raised eyebrows at each other as they followed, wondering what the kitchen had to do with math, but waited patiently while Scott rummaged through the refrigerator. Pulling out a pack of bologna, he peeled off three slices and brought them over to the cutting board, where he cut them up. "Come here." They approached. "Now - pretend these are pies at a party. The people who brought them already had them cut like this. One's in ten pieces, one's in six, and one's in eight. How are you going to be sure that the guest who gets peach pie will get a piece that's the same size as the guest who gets pecan pie?"

"Pretty funny pecan pie," Frank quipped.

Scott elbowed him. "Work with me here, man." And using the bologna, they figured out the lowest common denominator.

"You are good at this," Ororo said.

"Good at math? Or good at dealing in bologna?" He grinned at his own play on words, but neither of them spoke English well enough to catch it.

"No, no," Ororo said. "Good at teaching."

He blinked. "I am?"

"You are," she said, and Frank nodded agreement.

Scott looked down again at the mangled bologna slices on the maple cutting board. "But it's pretty straightforward stuff."

"To _you_," Frank said, laughing.

* * *

><p>"She said I was a good teacher," Scott told Jean as he racked the balls a second time and lined up the yellow lead on the table's foot spot. Removing the rack, he made a grand gesture. "You break."<p>

"Are we playing 8-Ball again?"

"Unless you want to try something else."

"No, this is fine. It's not like I'm ready to take on Paul Newman."

"Who's Paul Newman?"

"The _actor_ Paul Newman."

"Oh, I thought you meant a person."

She laughed. "Well, he_ is_ a person, Scott."

"Christ!" He blew out in embarrassed frustration. "I just meant, you know, some guy you knew named Paul Newman! What does the actor have to do with playing pool?"

"Paul Newman made _The Hustler_ a long time before Tom Cruise made _The Color of Money_. That was just a bad sequel, you know."

"Oh." Scott blushed, feeling foolish - and young. Film trivia wasn't his forté.

Still grinning, she patted his cheek fondly. "It's not important. But you're not ready for Paul Newman, either, boy-o."

Scott shrugged. "No, I guess not."

What Jean didn't know, of course, was that Summers could have given Newman's Fast Eddie Felson a run for his money, and had threatened Warren, Hank and Frank with unspecified dire consequences if any of them let the cat out of the bag - not because he sought to hustle Jean, but because he wanted to keep her playing. His mutation gave him an unfair advantage in games of physics and geometry, and his eyes were more than a vent for solar-powered force beams. He _saw_ differently - could track motion with uncanny precision, determine trajectories and spatial relationships with instinctive skill, and even figure probabilities with innate facility. Jean knew all that, but as an abstract description in his personal file. That it might translate in the real world to a budding pool shark wasn't something she'd pondered.

Now, she placed her cue ball and struck it hard, but the packed triangle at the table's end barely scattered under the white ball's assault. Nothing found a pocket. "Damn," she muttered, moving so he could take his turn. There were several possible shots, but he eschewed them all in favor of hitting the remaining block of balls, breaking them further. A solid slipped into a corner pocket, more by chance than design, and he glanced around the table for another shot, chose what should have been easy but made sure to hit the green six just enough off-center to cut left and miss the pocket by a good three inches.

"Ha!" she said, triumphant. "My turn."

Smiling faintly, he moved back to let her shoot and tried (unsuccessfully) not to stare at her ass as she bent over the table. Despite his impulsive vow to marry her someday, in his saner moments, he considered his infatuation to be hopeless - she was eight years out of his league - but he couldn't stop how he felt any more than he could have halted a freight train. Sometimes, he wandered down to the basement just to walk by the lab and hear her inside, humming to herself, or he dialed the phone in her room to hear her pick up and say 'hello.' He'd memorized the number of her license plate, and her weekly schedule, too, so he knew where she was every minute of the day. _You're pathetic, Summers,_ he told himself. Aloud, he asked, "So what do you think? About what Ro said?"

Jean finished her shot, then looked around at him. Light from the Tiffany lamp overhead fired her hair and he wished he could see her in full color. "I'm sorry, I think I missed something. What did Ro say about what?"

"She said I was a good teacher. What do you think?"

"Oh." She straightened. "Well, you taught me to play pool. But given how badly I play, I'm not sure that's a recommendation."

He sighed. "I'm serious. Could I be a teacher, do you think?"

Sensing that there was more behind the question than idle curiosity, she leaned up against the table edge to study him. "What brought this on?"

Suddenly embarrassed, he shrugged, unsure how to explain all the conflicting wants and dreams that had been running through his head of late. He was still young enough that the possibilities seemed infinite, unconstricted by the buckles of too many previous choices, but he was single-minded by nature and all the many options confused him. He'd been struck by her devotion to her research, and it troubled him that nothing consumed him in the same way. He was a proselyte in search of a religion.

Coming over, he leaned up against the table beside her, holding his cue stick in front of him, both hands clasped on the shaft. He didn't look at her as he spoke, looked down instead at the fine dark grain of the wooden floor beyond the central carpet. "I've been thinking about a college major. I'm leaving for Berkeley in a month, so I've been thinking about what to major in."

"I thought you'd planned to get a degree in engineering?"

"Yeah, I did. But now, I don't know." He stopped, letting his thoughts fall into order before speaking further. "This whole mutant thing - it's just starting, y'know? If what you and Hank and the professor say is true, there are going to be a lot more of us. Probably _are_ a lot more of us, even now."

She nodded. "Yes, I think so."

"So who's going to teach them? I mean, the professor is teaching us, but there are just six of us here, and you, me, Hank and Warren - we're not taking school classes. It's just Frank and Ro who're actually finishing high school. And he's busy all the time with us, as it is."

He looked over at her. She was watching him solemnly, not with tolerant amusement or half-distracted patience. She cared what he thought, and _that_ was why he loved her. Beyond the loud cacophony of eighteen-year-old hormones or the romantic devotion of a knight to his lady, Scott Summers loved Jean Grey because she _listened_ to him, treated him as a person with thoughts and ideas of his own, not just the teenaged kid who worshiped the ground she walked on. She listened as if he might have something interesting to say.

"More kids are going to come here, kids like Ro, who don't have anywhere else to go and no one who cares about them. You and Hank say most mutant powers develop at puberty - I was late - but that makes me wonder. How many of those kids are going to come here needing to finish high school? Xavier can't teach every subject to everybody when he has twenty students instead of two." He shrugged and looked off, suddenly shy about adding the next thought, but driven to do so anyway. "Maybe I could help. If I have some talent for teaching, maybe I could get a degree in education and come back here to help the professor teach." He stole a glance at her. "Does that sound crazy?"

She was still watching him with great intensity. "No, Scott. It doesn't sound crazy at all. You're right. We're just seeing the tip of the iceberg. If my research is right, and my estimations, there are already over a million mutants in the U.S. alone, though most have mutations at only delta or gamma levels. But there are others like us, beta and even alpha mutants who're frightened by what they can do, and don't understand what they are - call themselves freaks instead of gifted. Those kids deserve a chance no less than we do. We just got lucky."

She stopped, staring at a Monet print on the wall though she didn't see it. Instead she saw the petal-pale pink walls of a sanitarium room, blank and hopeless, the box in which society discarded its broken pieces. "Sometimes I wonder how many other little girls are out there, hearing voices in their heads, diagnosed as schizophrenic and medicated into numb stupidity when it's really the thoughts of others that they hear? I think about those little girls, Scott. That's why I do what I do. I know I told you before that I do it because I want to understand who and what we are - and I do. But it's also for those forgotten little girls."

She didn't realize she was crying until he reached up to wipe away a tear. "Yeah," was all he said.

Turning, she smiled at him, bright and a little brittle. "If teaching is what you want, then I think you could do it. But don't do it because you think Charles expects it of you. He doesn't."

"I know."

"You have to do it because _you_ want to."

"I know. I want to."


	5. Berkeley Bound

Scott had not been back to California since he'd left with three suitcases of clothes, three boxes of personal items, and a thick white bandage around his eyes. At the time, he'd fully expected to spend the rest of his life sightless. Two months later, he'd had his sight back - if reduced to dual tones of red and black - but not his confidence. He was a freak, a genetic aberration, and he'd wallowed in self-pity for twice as long as he'd suffered real blindness. Since he'd had his needs met - food, shelter, clothing on his back - he'd had the luxury of self-involvement, and good looks and high school popularity had rendered him mildly spoiled. All of his life, things had come easily to him. It wasn't until the arrival of Francesco Placido, curled tight in fetal catatonia, that the truth of his situation had struck him forcefully, and he'd bounced back to his usually cheerful self almost overnight. Perspective was a wonderful thing.

Yet when his mother had asked - even begged - him to come home for Christmas last year, he'd refused, driven by stubbornness, a lingering uncertainty as to his welcome, and a half-guilty gratitude to be free at last of what he considered (at eighteen) the embarrassment of his family. Even before the San Diego Uni High School Prom incident, relations at home had been strained. If he still chatted with his mother once a week by phone, his brother had yet to forgive him for mutating into something out of an episode of the _X-Files_, and he'd failed completely to turn out as his father had envisioned.

In fact, his perceptions of family attitudes were only half-right. Alex did resent him, but his father didn't. Chris Summers suffered from a wrenching grief that he didn't know how to express beyond chilly silence. He still carried in his wallet - folded, faded and worn soft with years of handling - a special father's day card that Scott had made, at age five. On it was a child's impressionistic picture of Chris standing beside his jet, and Scott himself in the pilot seat. For years, Chris had dreamed of seeing that drawing come to life. Now, it never would. He had chalked up Scott's teen rebelliousness to the growing pains of all fledgling young men. Chris himself had been far worse, and more inclined to real trouble, and when he'd become so frustrated that he'd wanted to strangle his son, he'd reminded himself that he'd never felt a need to search Scott's room, nor had to bail the boy out of jail. Scott was basically a good boy. But the manifestation of his mutant powers had ended any chance Scott had of becoming an air force pilot in his own turn. Chris didn't blame Scott for that. But it was some time before he stopped resenting God.

In any case, there had been no reason for Scott to return to the Golden State until fall registration for his freshman year at Berkeley. He'd forgotten how bright it was in the full California sun, and how much he'd missed that. He felt like a glass filled to the brim with all the light. "Until your body adjusts, you will have to find a way to release it," Xavier warned him. The professor had come out with him, to settle him in for Welcome Week, just like the parents of other freshmen. Except Xavier wasn't Scott's parent, and Scott was very conscious of that, very self-conscious, in fact, when the professor paid the whole of his semester bill with one check. Scott had a scholarship, true, and received in-state tuition because he could claim a home address in Linda Vista, California - but no one living at that address had wanted to see him at this university. His father had hoped he'd choose the USAF Academy in Colorado Springs, and his mother had prayed for Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles.

But Scott had applied in secret to Berkeley, and won a scholarship based on near-perfect SAT math scores. When he'd finally admitted what he'd done to his parents - and where he planned to go - his father had told him flatly that a scholarship was the only way he'd attend UC-Berkeley, because Chris Summers would die and go to hell before he paid a dime to 'that school.' The Vietnam vet had too many foul memories of the violent Berkeley anti-war demonstrations, fire-bombed buildings, draft dodgers, "Free Huey" movement, and being spat on by those who claimed to support peace. Now, he and Scott fought an old battle in an era when no one under twenty could remember the conflict that had split families and wounded a nation. Scott had accused his father of living in the past and not caring what Scott himself wanted in the present, and Chris had accused Scott of going behind his back to apply to the one school in the entire state that Chris detested with real passion. They hadn't spoken fifty words to each other since, and most of the words they had exchanged had been said on the night of Scott's mutant manifestation.

They hadn't been the words many other young mutants had heard.

Although he sometimes felt resentful of his father, he would never forget that when Christopher Summers had come to pick him up at the prom and found the police manhandling him, he had barked orders in the voice of a USAF officer for the men to get their hands off his son until and unless they could prove that Scott had broken the law. Later, Chris had taken Scott's hand and led him to the car, then said, "It'll be all right," as he'd buckled Scott's seatbelt, because Scott was shaking too badly to do it himself. His hands had been gentle on Scott's face, and the man who'd survived a Viet Cong POW war camp hadn't been afraid to run his thumbs over the thin lids covering his son's deadly eyes.

So Chris carried a thirteen-year-old father's day card in his wallet, and Scott carried the memory of his father's hands on his face. Both were a tender secret they couldn't quite admit to the other, and because they couldn't, the chasm remained between them. They were stubborn in their pride.

Now, Scott and Xavier left Sproul Hall - the administration building - by the rear handicapped access, and Scott wheeled the professor around the long way before heading south towards Bancroft Avenue and Scott's new dorm. Off to their right was a line of trees shading special interest tables ranging from BAMN for Affirmative Action to omnipresent Greek organizations, all leading up in the distance to the famous Sather Gate focal point of so many protests and demonstrations during the 60s. The professor found the whole experience amusing and nostalgic, new and oddly mournful, at once. How many times had he seen a semester begin on a college campus? But always as the professor, never the father, even if his parenthood here were merely by proxy. Scott had still wormed his way into Xavier's heart, arriving in Westchester frightened and proud and desolate, certain he'd had no future, just as he'd had no sight. Xavier had taught him to hope again, to spread his wings, and now he was leaving the nest. He was hardly the first to attend college under Xavier's patronage, but he was the first to fly so far away.

Scott's own thoughts were less coherent, edged with excitement, but also shame. Although he had a scholarship here, he couldn't forget on whose charity he lived. If Xavier thought of Scott Summers as the son he'd never had, Scott didn't yet think of Xavier as his father. None of it was his money, and he was uncomfortably conscious of that.

But at least out here in the bright California sun, no one looked twice at the guy in red shades.

From campus, they headed two blocks south to the Unit Three dorms on Durant Avenue. Norton Hall. Warren drove the rental car they'd taken from the airport, where Warren's private jet waited; idly, Scott wondered how many other students had been ferried cross-country in first class style. Along with a hundred others, he went through the process of checking in, then Warren helped him haul his belongings upstairs to the fourth floor and his double room. He hesitated as he unlocked the door for the first time, but was relieved to find it empty. He really wasn't ready yet to deal with a roommate; he needed time to establish his boundaries. "Hey," Warren said, behind him, still standing in the hall. "You okay?"

"Okay enough," Summers replied, then snorted. "I can always run home again if I can't hack it."

Warren shook his head. "You'll get over it. Everybody is freaked the first week or two."

"Yeah, but 'everybody' can't level their entire building by blinking." It was hissed out harsh and low.

"And 'everybody' doesn't have sixteen-fucking-feet of wings, either, to strap down _every goddamn_ morning. It felt like shit for four years. Don't whine, Summers."

Almost, Scott snapped back, but bit down on his retort. Pity wasn't what he needed, and Warren had never been inclined to give it to him. Instead, he smiled and raised his middle finger, and Warren boxed his ears - lightly, so as not to displace the glasses. The professor had arrived, in any case, from the elevator access, and the two boys finished carrying up Scott's things. There really hadn't been that much, when it had come down to it. Clothes in suitcases, his acoustic guitar, his favorite books in two boxes, a laptop that the professor had presented him with as a going-away present, a coffeemaker, a small fridge the professor had insisted on buying for him once they'd arrived in the town, and assorted miscellany that had been dumped haphazardly in a pair of laundry baskets. Compared to his room at the mansion, the dorm felt horribly cramped, but the lightwood furniture and the wide window made it less claustrophobic. Scott claimed a bed, a dresser and the desk under the window (first come, first serve), and set up a framed picture on the latter. He'd taken it just the week before at Westchester - everyone crowded onto the mansion stairwell, the professor in his chair at the bottom. But it was just an excuse to have a picture of Jean on display without explaining to all and sundry that she wasn't really his girlfriend.

And that, to Scott Summers, was the most wrenching thing about leaving New York. He needed a picture of her where he could see it, but she didn't need one of him.

Of course, what he didn't know was that Jean had tacked up in her locker at Columbia's teaching hospital a picture of the two of them feeding squirrels on the rear mansion grounds, side-by-side and shoulders touching. And she had no qualms about explaining who the boy was in the picture. Everyone agreed that her adopted little brother was quite good looking. A few also noted that she talked about him rather a lot, for an adopted brother, but politely refrained from commenting on the fact.

When everything was in the room, the professor sent Warren off to find a suitable restaurant for dinner and then had Scott sit down on his new bed. "Getting rid of him?" Scott asked.

Xavier smiled faintly. "You might say that."

"I don't think he was fooled."

"I wasn't trying to fool him."

Silence fell, and stretched, and tore slightly. "Being afraid is normal, you realize," Xavier said.

"I know."

"Why are you upset?"

Scott stared down at his hands. Even with the blinds shut, the room seemed preternaturally bright, compared to dim New York winter days and the dark wood halls of Xavier's mansion. He could feel it even now, buzzing in his head, with the first press of a headache behind his brows. Reaching beneath his glasses, he rubbed his eyes carefully. "Can't you read my mind?" he asked at last.

"I could. I'd rather not. I'd rather you told me."

Scott opened his mouth, then shut it. How to begin, without sounding inappreciative? "I wouldn't be here without you. You have . . . no idea . . . how grateful I am. Well, maybe you do." He paused, feeling foolish. "I don't like being a burden."

"You're not."

"I am. You don't have to do this."

"Exactly. I don't _have_ to do it. I want to do it. You are no burden to me, Scott. You never were."

Turning his face sideways, Scott blinked rapidly and was relieved that, when his eyes were open, he couldn't cry. The beams destroyed everything in their path, including tears.

"Now," the professor said, "the part no one ever wants to talk about - money." He watched the boy flinch visibly, and wished there was some way to make this easier. He knew better than to give Scott unlimited access, or the boy wouldn't touch a thing, counting pennies like a miser - the very opposite of what most parents feared. "Your housing, meal plan, and tuition have been taken care of. Your books are to go on this." He handed over a credit card. "As are any clothing needs. This" - he handed over an ATM card - "is for your personal use . . . however you wish to spend it. We'll start with two hundred dollars a month. Incidentals." Scott was gaping and trying not to. That includes food outside your meal plan, books for entertainment, movies, and _videogames_." That last, Xavier said with raised eyebrows, teasing just a little to make the gift easier to swallow.

Blushing, Scott reached forward to accept the card. "I won't use it all," he said, as if taking a solemn vow.

"Perhaps not, perhaps so. In any case, two hundred dollars will be deposited in the account once a month. I won't be checking to see what the balance is." Leaning back in his chair, he winked. "Going to college without spending money isn't much fun." The boy had flushed a deep red almost as bright as his glasses.

"I'll pay it back," he whispered.

"No, you won't," Xavier snapped. "I have no children. I never will. Allow me to spend my money how and where I see fit."

"Why are you doing this?" Scott raised his burning face. "I've never really understood that - why you do this? Why you took us all in?"

"Because I can. And because I want to."

"I owe you so much - "

"You _owe_ me nothing at all. A gift that expects repayment is not a gift. All I ask is this: pass it on. Help others, as you have been helped. If you do that, then you will have repaid me in the best way possible, son."

Scott nodded. "I can do that."

"I know you can."

It wasn't much later that Warren returned with a short list of premier San Francisco restaurants and they took Scott to dinner, fed him well, then left him to settle into his new home in privacy. He spent a long time that night, staring at the picture on his desk. God, he missed them - all of them, not just Jean. In the past year, he'd grown used to communal living. The dorm room was too quiet. Outside the door it was loud enough, with people coming and going and calling out to each other, exchanging names, interests, places of origin - building the foundations of potential future friendships. He might have gone out, too. Even two years ago, he would have. Popular, good-looking, and easy-going, he'd been confident of making friends because he always had. But that had been before May of 1996, before his senior prom - before rose-quartz glasses. What would the people outside the door think, if they knew what his eyes could do? Would they flee him? Would they condemn him as the freak he'd once thought himself? He didn't know. So he locked his door, curled up on his bed, took some aspirin for the sun-induced ache in his skull, and tried to pretend that he enjoyed his vaunted isolation.

* * *

><p>His dorm was co-ed in all respects. He'd known the floor was co-ed, but his first night there, he'd spent ten minutes looking for the men's room and had finally given up and asked, then been pointed towards a door. Finding another guy at the sinks (urinals or no), he'd assumed he was in the right place. But the next morning, as he exited his shower stall only to find a <em>girl<em> entering the one beside his, he dropped shampoo, comb, and towel in shock, right there on the wet floor. Amused, she winked at him as she shut her stall. "Co-ed everything" drifted out to him, along with her laughter.

"Jesus H. Christ," he muttered, "Welcome to Berkeley," and wondered why none of the Housing-packet literature had mentioned 'co-ed bathrooms' - or had he just missed that part? In any case, the event caused him to rethink his liberality, as he found it rather disconcerting to be sharing a john with members of the opposite sex with whom he wasn't also sharing a bed.

Not that sharing a bed with a girl was likely any time in the near future. He hadn't thought much about that since high school. Or rather, he'd thought about it quite a lot, but as thinking about it tended to sink him in a miasma of self-pity, he tried to avoid dwelling on it. Instead, he collected a campus map, a town map, his wallet, and set out on his own by foot. He'd slept too late to join the Welcome Week tour schedule, even if he'd wanted to, but he preferred to find his way around on his own. He started with the blocks around his dorm, then branched out onto campus, spending most of the day in exploration, from the Hearst theater and the stadium on the east, past the Memorial Glade with its rich greenery, towards the campanile and the MLK student union. He enjoyed the opportunity to wander, and crisscrossed the campus via concrete sidewalks in the shadow of pine trees and mix-and-match university buildings, some of them being renovated by construction workers with loud radios. Students zipped to and fro on bicycles, and he narrowly avoided being hit once or twice. He spent a few hours wandering the huge library, dwarfed by its vaulted ceilings, then spent a few hours more in the student store, and the union arcade. The whole time, no one spoke to him unless the situation demanded it. He was just another freshman.

By sunset, he had a better lay of the campus, but he was also beginning to feel the effects of a surplus of sunlight, and made his way up a path towards 'The Big C' - a steep clearing that overlooked the San Francisco Bay. He didn't go all the way to the drop off, veering from the path into the woody concealment of trees. No one was around, and at first, he tried opening his eyes towards the forest floor, but it just gauged up great chunks of loam and dirt. Not a bright idea. Reluctantly, but at a loss, he turned his face up to let the beams shoot skyward in a few short, intense bursts. Although he could not shut off his power completely, he could (somewhat) control the strength of it. If anyone noticed, perhaps they would take it for a peculiar skylight or a scientific experiment. He only dared five blasts, but felt better, and made his way back to the main path, then to campus, and then back to his dorm. Still no sign of his roommate - but he didn't much mind. He grabbed a solitary meal in the dining hall, reading a book while he ate at a table in the corner. At first, he found the white noise of people coming and going to be distracting, but within half an hour, he'd remembered the essential art of tuning it all out and was completely absorbed by the meteorological descriptions of John Barnes' SF thriller, _Mother of Storms_.

Maybe Ororo needed a nickname, he thought, grinning to himself. But when his supper was over, he trudged back to Norton Hall and his room. Alone.

The next several days passed in much the same fashion. The only people he had cause to speak to outside of random cashiers, university staff, and the residence hall assistant (a mumbled excuse about why he wasn't getting involved in Welcome Week activities), were at the end of a phone line over two thousand miles away. In New York.

"You gotta get out more, Gamma-Gaze," was Warren's advice. "Quit holing up in your room."

"I'm not holing up. I get out everyday."

"I mean get out and do something with _other_ people, idiot. You won't meet anybody playing the hermit."

And from Hank: "Your roommate still has not arrived?"

"No, and it's _Thursday_! I'm starting to wonder if he's going to." As per Berkeley's Housing policies, Scott had been sent his roommate's name, address and phone number months ago, and had meant to contact Elijah Haight, but had never quite gotten around to it. So now, he knew nothing about the other boy that might explain the delay.

"Hmm. Well. Haven't you introduced yourself to your dorm neighbors?"

"Uh - not exactly. I mean, I've met the RA, and all."

A sigh on the other end of the phone line. "You should talk to your neighbors, Scott - an exchange of names and phone numbers is hardly out of order."

Frank had given similar advice, although the intricacies of the American college experience were beyond him. "What do you mean you have not met anyone? Where are the girls? You are in California,_ cretino_! _Adossi il cafonismo come il mantello!" __You wear stupidity like a cloak. _Like Warren, Frank had never been inclined to pity him, and Scott had been forced to laugh - but at least Frank wasn't being evasive or sounding ominous, which was a relief.

Of all the people at the mansion, though, only Jean hadn't talked to Scott since he'd left the East Coast - almost as if she were avoiding him.

* * *

><p>"E-mail is a wonderful thing."<p>

"What?" Jean Grey looked up from where she sat at her desk in the lab, marking up an article for later reference. It wasn't a particularly engaging article, but scientists weren't paid for their witty narrative and compelling imagery. In her more catty moments, she penned numbers in the lower left-hand corners, one to ten on a 'dull' scale. This particular article rated a seven. Now, though, she set aside stress-related inhibitors on the immune system to regard Hank McCoy where he stood in front of her, big arms crossed, seeming two parts amused to one part annoyed.

"E-mail," he reiterated. "To California. It's easy, it's fast, and it's cheap."

She frowned, wanting to say that she didn't know what he was talking about but of course she did. "Henry," she began, aiming for patience and winding up with a testy, "I know all about e-mail. I even know Scott's e-mail address. But college is a new experience for him. He should make new friends." She turned back to her article. "I wouldn't be doing him any favors by writing to him. Besides, he's got so many things to see and do, I doubt he thinks of me much."

Pulling over a spare chair, Hank sat down on it and clasped oversized hands between his knees. "I wasn't worried about Scott, actually. I was worried about you."

"Me?"

"Yes. Don't pretend to be surprised. You're never going to contend for an Oscar, Red." Reaching out, he tugged at a lock of her hair. "You miss him."

"Well, yeah. I guess." She frowned, uncertain how to reply. She'd not expected to miss so badly an eighteen-year-old bundle of testosterone-driven energy. "But he needs . . . he needs to do this on his own, Hank. He doesn't need a big sister looking over his shoulder."

"Maybe he does."

Pulling off her glasses, she lowered her chin to regard him with evident annoyance, her question apparent from her expression. He kept his eyes on his hands for a moment, then gave her a sly grin. "I seem to recall a lot of pep talks delivered to you, your first year of med school at Columbia."

And she smiled back, remembering too. Hank was the only reason she'd survived that year.

"Yes, he may indeed have much to see and do," Hank continued. "But that can be overwhelming, not just exciting. And you know Scott - he'll die and go to hell before he admits to the rest of us that he has uncertainties. He won't tell even Warren. Maybe especially not Warren. Warren made it through Harvard. Scott doesn't want to worry the professor - or me. And he thinks he has to be a model for Frank and Ro. But you . . . for whatever reason, he talks to you."

Henry watched her perk up at that. Jean needed to be needed. "Ya think?" she asked.

"Yeah, I think." And he grinned. What he didn't tell her was that he had a couple of letters in his inbox from Scott, asking rather wistfully if Henry knew why Jean hadn't written to or called him, and was she angry with him for some reason? Now, Henry McCoy pushed himself up and fingered a pen in his pocket. "Drop him a note. He could probably use a pep talk or two."

Her smile was brilliant. "Thanks, Hank."

"Any time."

* * *

><p>Having finalized his fall schedule, Scott had decided to pick up his textbooks early, and also to splurge ten bucks on a shiny dark U Cal coffee mug with a gold bear on the side. It was, perhaps, a very freshman thing to do, but seeing the glasses and cups and mugs as he'd passed the display on the way to the textbook center, he'd paused to look.<p>

He'd wanted to go to Berkeley since he'd been fifteen and captivated in American history class by the stories of the 1960s. The name of Berkeley had come up again and again, and the mythos of it all had attracted him, even as it had repelled his father. Not everything about Berkeley in the 60s and 70s had been admirable, certainly, but at the core of it? There was a tradition of civil liberties and freedom and expansion of the mind that, to the young Scott Summers, had embodied the best that was American, and there was no-where else he'd wanted to go so very much. Now, here he was, and however overwhelming it might feel, there was a magic of possibility at the base of it that all his uncertainties and doubts couldn't dislodge. He'd been accepted to _Berkeley. _

So when he'd seen the mugs and cups and glasses, he'd stopped to consider, his eye drawn to one of the dark ones with a gold foil bear on the side. (He couldn't see the gold, but he could tell it was foil and knew the school colors were blue and yellow.) Doubting the professor would object to a little school pride, he'd picked it up. Now, he stood in line with a stack of eleven textbooks and the mug, and the lines, even the Saturday before classes began, were horrid. He'd already been waiting fifteen minutes and was barely halfway to the checkout. All around him, equally bored students flipped through their books, chatted with each other, chatted on ubiquitous cell phones, or stared at the ceiling. When his own cell phone went off, he assumed for a moment that it was someone else's, then, when it dawned on him it was his, he almost dropped everything he was carrying, fishing it out of his back pocket. Getting it open by the fifth ring, he barked, "Hello?" into the little mic, hoping the caller hadn't given up.

"Scott? Is this Scott Summers?"

Zero gravity drop-shock spun his stomach around and this time, he did fumble his textbooks - but not the mug. The crash of cardboard and paper drew the eyes of other students, and the pretty Asian girl in line behind him huffed in disgust as he bent over, trying to gather the books and balance the phone on his shoulder. "Ah - _Jean_?"

"Yeah, it's Jean. How are you?"

"Um, in line, at the moment. I'm in the bookstore." He was still trying to gather books.

"I called at a bad time?"

"Maybe a little. But that's okay." Now that he'd heard from her finally, he wasn't about to chase her off. He'd have been willing to talk to Jean Grey while balancing buck naked on one foot in a pond full of alligators.

But she said, "How about if I call you back in half an hour?"

"No, really - it's okay." He tried picking up the books again, one-handed, without letting go of the phone or the mug . . . and promptly dropped them all once more. She could hear that on the other end, of course.

"Scott, don't be silly." She was laughing a little. "I'll call you back, boy-o. Pick up whatever you just dropped." And the line went dead. Sighing, he shut the phone and picked up his books, awaiting his turn at the register and forcing himself not to check his watch every few minutes.

Two-and-a-half hours later, he was no longer checking. Sitting outside on the steps of lower Sproul plaza, he ate a cold bagel and fended off the advances of an importunate squirrel, glancing now and then at the phone on top of the bag beside him. Depression tugged down his shoulders, and made him sigh without even realizing it. He glowered behind his glasses at every couple who passed him on the wide expanse of red brick, but he wasn't sure who he was madder at - Jean, for failing to keep her promise, or himself, for the fact that it mattered so much. If only he hadn't been too graceless to juggle textbooks, coffee mug, and a phone in the first place.

He wasn't sure how long he sat there on the steps, slumped down, elbows on his knees, lost in the labyrinth deconstruction of his own 'if onlys,' when a stray flit of conversation behind him caught his ear. ". . . a UFO up on the Big C."

He glanced around as two girls came down the steps. One wore a t-shirt advertising the Quetzal Café in San Francisco, and the other sported a frighteningly brief hot-pink tank top . . . and he really didn't think it a good idea to examine that top too closely. "A UFO?" said Hot Pink.

"Yeah. They say there're flashing red lights in the evening, up on the C."

"Oh, come on! Who says that's a _UFO_? It's probably just a bunch of Stanford guys playing a goddamn joke!"

"But it's not near the C itself. It's off in the forest-y part. Jeremy said he's seen it with his own eyes. Red beams shooting off up at the sky. . . "

And they passed out of range.

Scott blinked. Red beams shot at the sky? Up at the Big C?

Surely not, he thought.

Surely. Not.

But what else could it be? _Oh, shit_, he muttered sotto-voce. Grabbing his bag of books and his phone, he hopped up to chase the girls across the plaza, hoping he might hear more. But by the time he caught up to them - not too close to alert them - they were discussing what to wear to a semester kick-off frat party. Giving up, he headed off down a different sidewalk, angling back in the general direction of his dorm.

A UFO? He'd been classified with little green men from Mars?

Maybe it had nothing at all to do with him. Maybe this Jeremy simply had an overactive imagination. Or it really was some guys from Stanford with a new twist on defacing the school monument. Red lights instead of red paint.

But he couldn't convince himself of that. 'Red beams' sounded entirely too familiar - and what was he going to do about that? He hadn't intended to start the rumor mill spinning and the last thing he needed was to have curious students sneaking around trying to catch sight of the 'UFO.' Alarm fluttered in his belly.

The _breeep! _of his cell phone interrupted and - once again - he almost dropped his bag of books fishing out the phone to answer it. "Hello?"

"Scott! Finally! I'm _so_ sorry. I'm on rotations today, and by the time I got free again . . . well, anyway - how _are_ you?"

And just like that, the sound of her voice banished all his depression and irritation. "You called back!"

"Of course I did. I said I would." A pause, then she added, "You were afraid I'd forgotten, weren't you?"

"Maybe a little." Well, in truth, he'd been quite sure she'd forgotten, but wasn't about to tell her that.

"I didn't forget about you, Scott. I just got busy. Now, I want to hear all about Berkeley. Tell me _everything_! I'm so jealous that you get all the sun and the bay."

And standing there in the middle of a sidewalk under an oak tree, he started laughing . . . just because she'd called him back. She hadn't forgotten him.

"What's so funny?" she asked.

"Nothing. It's just . . . 'everything's a pretty tall order!"

"Well, how about half of everything?"

Still laughing a little, he set his bag down at his feet and wiped his lower face with a hand. "I'll do my best. But I just heard the weirdest thing - it seems I'm a UFO"

"What?"

"I'm a UFO!" He glanced around, but no one was nearby to overhear. Nonetheless, to be safe, he left the sidewalk to sit under the tree, book bag between his knees, and related to Jean the rumor he'd overheard.

Jean was not amused, however. "Scott, you've got to be careful!"

"I'm trying to be! But man - what am I supposed to do?" Then, more softly, "There's not a private yard around here, miles from everything else, y'know?"

Silence reigned on the other end while Jean pondered that. "You've got your visor, right?"

"Yeah."

"Then instead of shooting at the sky or ground, try some precision blasting. It'll take longer to release the excess energy, but it's less likely to start any rumors."

"Precision blasting at _what_, Jean? Stray raccoons?"

"I don't know! Carve up fallen branches or something!"

He sighed. "Sorry. I didn't mean to snap. And I really wasn't trying to start a rumor."

"It's okay. And I know. You won't have to worry about this forever. Your body will adjust in another week or two. In the meantime, do a little forest ranger work instead of the unsolicited laser show. Now, tell me about the rest of your week."

So he did, lying on the grass and looking up at the sky through the leafy branches. She listened with interest, asked him questions, and scolded him a little, the same as the others had, for keeping to himself. "I know it's not easy to start over, but you've got to make an effort. Try eating dinner with_out_ a book in your hands. If you're always in your room, or gone, or reading at supper, people will assume you don't want to be bothered and you'll never meet anyone. Which of course, begs the question. Do you _want_ to meet anyone?"

That caught him by surprise and he frowned. "I guess."

"You _guess_? Doesn't sound any too convincing, Scott."

"I do want to meet people. But - I don't know. How close can I get to anyone here? I mean really? I can't tell them the truth!"

"Why not?"

"You were the one who was so worried, earlier, about rumors!"

"I was worried about _rumors_. Not about the truth. You don't want to alarm people, but you might find that you can trust a few with the truth. If you give them a chance."

"What if they, you know, run me out or something?"

"Scott, you're at _Berkeley_. Home of liberalism. I thought that was why you wanted to go there in the first place?"

"Yeah, but not because I'm a mutant. I've wanted to come here for a long time."

"I know. But now it works in your favor. Don't overlook that, or underestimate it." She paused, then added, "Look, I have to go. I've got an M&M - mortality and morbidity - session in half an hour. I'll call you Monday night to see how your first day of classes went, okay?"

"All right."

"Send me e-mail."

"I will." And feeling buoyed, he closed the phone to head back to his dorm, step light and barely noticing how fast he covered the distance. Arriving at his building, he took the stairs up to his floor for exercise, only to find six people marching in and out of his dorm room like a line of ants, carrying burdens that seemed outsized for their body mass.

His roommate had finally arrived, it seemed. And seeing the amount of stuff flung about the dorm room's floor, Scott wondered if he planned to move in his entire family with him, too.

A big man in his mid-fifties paused to stick out a beefy hand while balancing a box of books with the other. "Hi! You must be Scott Summers. Good to meet you. I'm EJ's dad, Jeremiah Haight." Bemused, Scott shook the hand, which was almost as big as Hank's, and without any mutant cause. "EJ!" the man roared. "Your roommate's back!" And then in a more normal voice that still somehow seemed to fill the entire space of the hall, "That there's my wife, Violet. And that's JaLisa with her, and Clarice is coming up from the elevator, and I think Me'Shell's still back down at the U-Haul." Then - bellowing again - "EJ!"

"I'm right here, Dad!" said a voice behind Scott. "You don't need to yell."

And turning, Scott Summers got his first good look at EJ Haight. Years later, drunk on green St. Patrick's Day beer, he and EJ would share with one another exactly what their initial impressions had been, that day. To EJ, Scott had seemed all fresh-faced Americana with high patrician cheekbones, hair an artfully stylish mess, and sunglasses worn inside like a Hollywood escapee with pretensions to fame. To Scott, EJ had looked like an extra from a Spike Lee film, complete with shaved head, baggy pants two sizes too big, and a baseball cap worn backwards. All he'd needed was a hooded sweatshirt and ten gold chains (he'd had wooden beads instead).

Perhaps not the most auspicious of initial impressions.

Scott recovered first to offer the other boy a hand in his own turn. "Hey, I'm Scott. Welcome to Berkeley. And it's EJ not Elijah? I was kinda wondering where you were this past week. You need any more help carrying stuff up?" As if their poor room could hold anything else.

EJ took the hand. "I think we're 'bout done, but thanks. And nobody calls me Elijah but my mom when I'm in trouble." He grinned. "Good to meet you finally. Looks like a killer laptop you got on the desk in there, man. It fast enough to play any good video games?"

Smiling back, Scott said, "Graduation present. And yeah, it is."

"Cool."

EJ's father had backed away a little to give the boys space, and his wife had come over to join him, slipping an arm around his ample middle. Violet Haight was almost as tall as Jeremiah. "We were planning to take EJ out to dinner tonight. Would you like to come with us?"

Blushing, Scott shook his head. "No, I couldn't, it's a family - "

"Nonsense," Violet told him. "A 'family' dinner usually involves at least three sibling quarrels between EJ and the girls, and I figure if you come along, maybe they'll be on their best behavior."

"I doubt it," EJ said, half-laughing and grabbing one of the girls - Scott had already forgotten who was who - to knuckle her on the head. Squeaking in protest, she slapped at him.

"Bully!"

Still blushing, Scott tried again, "I really don't think - "

"I'd give it up, man," EJ advised, letting his sister go. "Mama don't take 'no' for an answer."

"He's right," the sister said, to be backed up by nods from the second and third girls, who, having dropped off their burdens, had come over to see who their brother would be living with for the next year. They were all, Scott noted, rather exceptionally pretty, especially the one EJ had been harassing, and two of the three were rather exceptionally tall, as well. Thus ringed about by a noose of Haights, he shrugged agreement.

"Okay, sure."

And that easily, his adoption into the family was settled, one white pigeon amid a flock of laughing crows. Jeremiah herded them back down to the parking lot where the four siblings squabbled over who had to ride in the back of the van, and Scott found himself in the front with EJ's father. "You know the town by now, I guess?" the man asked. "You get to navigate."

So Scott directed Jeremiah Haight to a local Denny's, and they all tumbled out of the van like puppies from a spilled basket. Passing the van's rear, Scott noticed a "Clergy" sticker with a white cross on the back glass. He'd somehow missed that, getting in. "Are you a _priest_?" he asked, stopping dead in his tracks.

"Pastor," the man replied. "Baptists don't call their ministers priests. They let us marry, too." And he winked.

But the attempt at humor barely registered on Scott, who - dismayed - continued to blink at the sticker. His new roommate was a preacher's kid? Would Scott have to suffer a semester's worth of crusading to save his immortal soul? How fast could he get a new roommate?

"Dad's the senior pastor at Bethany Baptist Church in L.A.," EJ said, dropping back to stand by Scott. "That's why I was late getting up here, to college. We've been doing a summer youth camp for city kids. I played the piano and coached ball. It just finished yesterday."

Turning, Scott glanced at him. "You play piano?" Maybe that housing survey had been worth something after all.

"Yep. You?"

"I play bass."

"Awesome!" EJ swatted Scott's shoulder in friendly fashion. "You brought it with you, man?"

"No, but I brought a guitar. I left the bass back in New York. I wasn't sure how it'd go over, y'know - amplification in the dorm."

"Hmm. Yeah. I can dig that. So what kind of music you play? What kind of guitar you got?"

"With me? Just a Takemine. But back in New York, I have a Steinberger and an Eden amp. Mostly, I play rock. I like Rush, the Police - that kind of thing."

"Oh, man - Neil Pert is awesome! He writes the best lyrics. You like Live? How about Toad the Wet Sprocket? U2? Living Color?"

"Yeah, all of them," Scott said, a bit surprised, and a smile stole slowly over his mouth. Maybe things would be all right, in the end. EJ was grinning, too, in the same kind of relief. Scott hadn't been the only one concerned.

"By a Steinberger," EJ asked, "you mean one of them little black basses without a headstock or body?" He made quick gestures trying to illustrate, and Scott was beginning to think that if someone tied his hands together behind his back, he'd be as mute as a fish.

"Yeah, that's the one. It's made all of graphite."

"I heard about those! You're supposed to be able to run over them with a freakin' Mack _truck_ and it won't hurt them!"

"It's true." A pause, then, "I don't suppose you could bring your piano with you?"

"Nah, but I got three different keyboards. I'll show you when we get back - "

"Hey, boys!" the Reverend Haight called from the door to Denny's. "You coming in to eat, or you going to talk instruments in the parking lot all night?"

So EJ and Scott went in, but spent most of the meal with heads together, bonding over bands and gear. EJ's three sisters cheerfully ignored them, but Jeremiah shared a private smile with his wife. It seemed that music was a universal language after all.


	6. Salt and Pepper

"So - what do we got?" Scott plopped down on the floor of the music room in the basement of their Unit Three dining hall, and looked up at EJ, sitting on the piano bench. The piano was the small room's only furniture, besides the carpet.

"Three drummers who don't know the meaning of 'dynamics,'" EJ said now, "two who can't hold a rhythm, one who was three hours late for the audition and, well, The Surfer Dude."

"Christ." Scott dropped back, arms out to his side in a symbolic cruciform of musical suffering. His amplifier hummed in his ear, ready, waiting. "We've got no band if we've got no drummer. Anybody else answer the ad?"

"Yeah, but that guy's not coming to audition until tomorrow."

"Damn." Scott sat up and pushed his glasses firmly onto his nose. "Then help me carry my equipment back over to our room and let's go eat." EJ did as asked, picking up the bass and its stand while Scott hauled the amplifier.

Scott's bass equipment had been shipped to him at Jean's insistence. He hadn't wanted to put anyone out at the mansion by asking them to box it up and pay to have it shipped, but Jean, and Warren, had argued that there was no reason for him to wait until Thanksgiving, or even Christmas. Both agreed that Scott worried too much about the cost of things - shipping the equipment was negligible for Worthington - but at least Jean understood that being beholden to people made Scott feel weak, and ashamed. "It's nothing, Scott. Really. We boxed it up with Hank's help, then Warren called UPS to come and get it, and that was that."

"It's over a hundred bucks to ship that stuff! That amp's heavy!"

"Pocket change for him," she'd said. Scott had snorted on the other end of the phone line, and she'd added, "Look, boy-o, Warren wanted to send it to you. Let him and say thanks. A hundred dollars is no more of an imposition for him than it would be for you to spend a dollar to buy a friend a cup of coffee."

So Scott now had his gear, and he and EJ had begun serious work towards a band. EJ had been writing music for years, and had a gift for both lyrics and composition, yet his compositions lacked a certain edge. Scott himself had no talent for producing original work of his own, but he could listen to what EJ had produced and, when he added his own touch here and there, something happened - some chemical reaction of melody and rhythm.

Rather like their entire experience as roommates.

"Yo! Hot chick alert at five o'clock."

Scott attempted to look without quite looking as he and EJ made their way through the dining hall service, but as was often the case, his lack of full peripheral vision hobbled him. "Man, the only hot chick I see is the one in the dumplings."

"Denim skirt, white shirt, on your right."

"Oh. Yeah. I'd say she's, um . . . an eight, maybe?"

"Eight-point-five. Dig those legs."

"You're a certified leg man, Eeej."

"We won't comment on what you are, Slim-boy."

Scott just laughed and loaded on the macaroni and cheese. EJ eyed his plate. "You're gonna die from a heart attack before you're fifty, eating like that. Besides, how do you stomach that stuff? Takes like dead rubber coated in wax."

Licking a stray bit of cheese off his finger, Scott shrugged. "Food is food."

EJ shook his head, wondering if his roommate's taste buds might have suffered from the same malady that had rendered him light-sensitive. EJ himself had picked up a cup of fruit, a salad, some bread and baked fish, while Scott had death by cholesterol in macaroni and cheese, buttered mash potatoes, steak and gravy, and cornbread.

At least living with Summers didn't mean he had to eat like him. EJ was still trying to figure out how anyone who inhaled a high-carb diet like that could be as thin as Summers was. For that matter, there were a lot of things about his roommate that baffled EJ.

Food acquired, EJ led them out to the dining area and parked them at a table with some of their dorm neighbors of the opposite sex. "Evenin', ladies." He grinned and seated himself amid the five girls, who made quick room for him. Then he kicked out a chair for Summers, who was hanging back. "Siddown, slim-boy." A month into the semester, EJ had simply stopped asking his roommate if he wanted to eat with this group or that - Summers' inevitable reply was 'no' - and had begun joining whatever table looked likely to welcome them, or had space. It was easier to get forgiveness than permission. And when maneuvered into it, Summers usually acquiesced. And enjoyed himself, too.

It was those damn glasses, EJ was certain. Summers hadn't had them that long, apparently. EJ had seen a few pictures of him, from high school. No glasses. Yet now he had them, and he never, ever took them off unless it was to replace them with goggles, and even then, he'd hide his eyes with a hand as he did so. "Extreme light sensitivity" he'd explained, their very first night. Even a 10-watt nightlight on his unprotected eyes caused unbearable pain, and EJ wasn't sure what to make of that, but Summers had all the medical paperwork, and had filed with the Disabled Students Program, so what did EJ know? Summers was a year older, going on nineteen instead of eighteen, and though he was from San Diego, he'd been out in New York for a year at what sounded like some kind of rehab institute. He'd been blind for a while, too, he'd said once, and EJ wondered how well he saw even now, since he still had some blind-man habits. He'd ordered his clothing precisely, and tended to keep shoes and other objects out of the walkway, even if the rest of his side of the dorm looked like a tornado had hit it. Occasionally, he walked into the edges of things, as if he hadn't noticed where an object ended, but the side-blinders might account for that.

All this, EJ had gathered from a combination of careful observation and well-placed, apparently innocent questions. Growing up, he'd watched his father or mother casually interview church members at meetings or Bible studies or Wednesday Night Supper, and then later assemble the puzzle pieces one at a time to get the big picture. It took patience. Now, the more pieces that EJ acquired, the more curious he grew about Scott Summers. He concluded that, light sensitivity aside, his roommate must have something seriously wrong with his eyes, serious enough that Scott wouldn't allow anyone else to see them, and EJ wondered what manner of disfigurement he'd suffered, and how bad it looked. It had to be something like that, EJ decided, or why would a previously popular, good-looking guy now get as twitchy in crowds as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs?

A girl at his father's church - his sister's best friend - had been severely burned a child. Come summer, she'd always cease attending parties or youth group activities, lest she be forced into a situation that would require her to reveal the bright pink scar tissue on her back and bare legs. Marred forever, and terrified of rejection, it had taken EJ two years of coaxing before Diane had let him see her in shorts.

"So, how goes the drummer search?" asked one of the girls at their table, while picking all the raisins out of a muffin. Her name was Phoebe. Her mother was Japanese and her father American, and she'd come out on the best end of both bargains. EJ could get lost in black eyes like that.

Summers glanced at EJ, but pointed his fork at Phoebe. "How does _she_ know about our drummer search?"

"The whole dorm knows about your drummer search," one of the other girls said, wrinkling her nose at him like a flirting bunny.

"I been advertising," EJ explained.

"Great," Summers muttered, and EJ could almost see him roll his eyes behind the shades. "Our proto-band is dorm gossip."

"Not gossip, man. Marketing."

"It's more exciting than the non-existent Big-C UFO," said bunny-nose. Her real name was Elizabeth 'Call me Liz' - but no one did.

"Man, won't that _die_?" Summers asked no one in particular.

EJ just chuckled. "Ain't no UFO, ladies. Just some Stanford dumbass with a red light. He figures he can tie Berkeley tail in a knot."

"It was over two _months_ ago," Summers said.

"Yeah, but no one ever figured it out." Phoebe spoke in a low, Nimoyesque tone and wove her head from side to side, like an asp before biting, "History's Mysteries, y'know?" Then she wiggled her fingers and giggled. "Or in this case, Berkeley's Mysteries." She took a sip from her Sobe Green Tea. "I wonder what it really was?"

"Who cares?" Summers said together with EJ's "Standford guys." They looked at each other, and grinned. Conversation branched from there, and now that he'd been drawn out of his shell, Scott participated readily enough. Perhaps he'd simply surrendered to the inevitable, but after supper - it being a Saturday - Phoebe suggested they go out to cruise Telegraph Avenue, and it didn't take much arm bending to convince Summers to tag along.

* * *

><p>"So, you're the guys looking for a drummer?"<p>

"Uh - yeah. We are," said the white boy, who was wearing shades even indoors in the basement. A Joe Cool Wannabe, and the bass player, to boot. Figured.

"_You're_ Lee Forrester?" the black boy asked. He was tall, well muscled, and sat at the piano. "And how'd you get in here without a dorm key?"

"Some guys saw me walking up with the drum and opened the door. And yeah, I'm Lee. You got a problem with that?"

"Uh, no. I just thought, from your e-mail - "

"You saw 'Lee' at the bottom, knew I was a drummer, and assumed I was a guy. Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt, and the last time I checked, I had tits underneath it."

The black boy snorted, half in shock, half in laughter, and the white boy's eyebrows had shot up over the top of his glasses. Lee Forrester deposited her bass drum on the carpet of the Unit Three music room. "You guys wanna help me unload my van, or stand around gaping like idiots?"

Exchanging a glance, they followed her upstairs to unload the van.

In truth, from the time she'd realized that her taste in pastimes ran to classically male pursuits - from Hot Wheels at seven, to baseball at twelve, to joining the high school drum corps as a teen - Lee Forrester had made a fine art of shocking the male of the species. She went out of her way sometimes to keep her gender ambiguous until she deemed it time for a revelation. Hence, when she'd contacted this band's organizer - apparently the black guy - she'd said nothing to dissuade him from thinking she was another guy. She found it enlightening, to gauge reactions when she showed up in skimpy shorts and a crop top. These two had been surprised, but they were recovering quickly. That boded well.

Auditions went both ways, after all.

* * *

><p>Later, EJ and Scott consulted over coffee. "So," EJ began.<p>

"So."

"Do we have a drummer?"

"Well, she can keep a rhythm, and she understands dynamics - "

" - and she can play a double-bass trap set, man!"

"But can we live with the acid tongue?"

"Hey, I live with yours, slim-boy." EJ laughed, but then grew serious. "You mind having a chick in the band?"

"No. Do you?"

"No."

Their denial, of course, was more a matter of saying what they were supposed to say rather than what they actually felt. Neither had ever been in a mixed-gender band before, and weren't too sure what to expect. But this was Berkeley, and it was the '90s, and women in rock music had become blasé. "Okay," EJ said finally, "We'll offer her the spot."

"Assuming she'll take it. I don't know if she liked us."

"Oh, she liked _you_, slim-boy. She was checking out your ass every time you turned your back."

Summers blushed, in part because he'd had to restrain himself from checking out the curve of her bust under her t-shirt, especially when she'd started to sweat from the exertion of drumming. He wasn't sure what to make of being attracted to a fellow band member.

"So what are we going to call it?" EJ asked.

"Call what?" Scott's mind had still been fixated on images of Lee Forrester's bustline.

"The _band_, man."

"Oh. I dunno. You're the ringleader, EJ. What d'you want to call it?"

Silence again for a few minutes. "I been thinking on that, actually. How 'bout 'Soapbox.' I mean, a lot of what I write, the lyrics - "

"They're a soapbox, all right!" Summers laughed. "But what kind of name is 'Soapbox'?"

"Easy to remember."

"All right, all right. I guess it'll do till we come up with something else."

They never came up with anything else.

* * *

><p>Lee Forrester had been practicing with 'the boys' for exactly one month when Thanksgiving break rolled in along with the November fog and cool nights. EJ departed for sunny LA, but neither Scott nor Lee had any place to go. Lee wasn't a student at Berkeley, nor at their great rival, Stanford. She did take occasional classes at Mills College in Oakland, but mostly worked for her father's boat rental service. Warren had offered to fly out to pick up Scott, but Scott had declined. It had seemed to him an unnecessary expense for a four-day holiday, and he didn't go down to San Diego for the same reasons he hadn't gone there for Christmas the year before.<p>

So Lee invited Scott out on the water with her. "Salt-water turkey," she'd told him.

"What about eating with your family?" he'd asked her.

"Dad and I kinda avoid the whole 'family holiday thing.' My mom died four years ago."

"Oh." He had paused, unsure how to answer such a tragic statement delivered with such self-possessed equanimity. "Well, um, okay. Sure. Thanks. I like to sail."

And so it was settled. Scott would spend Thanksgiving with Lee. He wondered if he should call this a date or simply mutual propitiation of the gods of boredom. He was never sure with Lee Forrester. One practice session, she might flirt with him shamelessly, then the next, put up a barrier bigger then the Hoover Dam. She was a strange girl: stubborn, hardheaded, and as bitter sweet as cider vinegar. She wore independence like plate armor, and he wondered if anyone, ever, would be permitted a peek inside. Maybe. But it wouldn't be him.

For her own part, Lee couldn't explain her fascination with a boy three years younger than her. Her one, long-standing rule in bands had always been not to fuck over or fuck with fellow band members. It made things messy. She'd learned that from vicious experience. A sharp tongue and good right hook was usually all it took to dissuade the persistent. Yet here she was, inviting Scott to go sailing over Thanksgiving with every intention of getting his pants off. Being naked physically was proxy for the emotional. She wasn't foolish enough to believe in 'no strings' sex; in her experience, there were always strings, whether or not she wanted them. But sometimes, if one got lucky, they weren't of the kind that trussed one up like a rodeo calf, flung down in the dirt and squirming helpless. Even if she'd never seen his eyes, she could tell that when he looked at her, he saw more than tits and ass. He saw that, too - he was young; he was male - but he asked her opinion on things, and actually listened to her replies. It wasn't love, by any stretch, but it was respect, and in Lee's experience, that was rarer.

"Did you bring a jacket?" she asked him when he showed up on the dock with his backpack, short sleeves, and a pumpkin pie in grocery-store plastic.

He patted the backpack. "In here. I've been sailing before."

Taking the pie, she eyed him. "How much do you know about a boat?"

"Not a lot. It wasn't mine. Don't ask me to do anything with the sails. But I know enough to've brought a jacket."

"Mmm," she said, and walked off towards the _Arcadia_, her favorite of the family boats - big enough to move around on, but not big enough to be fat and awkward in the water. He leapt aboard after her with obvious familiarity. He hadn't been lying, about having been on boats.

"How long has your family had this business?" he asked, finding a seat on a bench while she finished preparations to cast off.

"Since before I was born. Dad and Mom came out here in the '60s, along with half of California." She uncovered and ran up the mainsail. "But they came from Florida. He'd owned a pair of shrimp boats there, but sold them when he got married. He wanted to do something that didn't keep him out for weeks. Boat rentals on the Bay were big business. Still are, though there are a helluva lot more of them these days. But we've been here for ages. We survive."

Scott nodded while staring out over the Bay. Almost noon, the fog had disappeared by this hour and it looked to be a gorgeous day, warm for November. "Well go up north towards the Bridge," she said. "and you can see it from the underside."

He grinned at that. "Cool."

They didn't need jackets after all, and late in the fall, on a family-holiday weekend, there weren't many boats out. They talked about California compared to life in the Northeast. Lee had never been to New York; she'd barely been outside the state, while Scott had lived in a variety of places, even Korea for a year, as a child. The side benefits, he said, of being an air force brat: no place to call a hometown. Sensitive to the sour irony in his voice, Lee carefully avoided asking him any questions about his family - such as why he hadn't gone to visit them for the holiday - and he returned the favor.

As they approached from the east into the afternoon shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge, Scott said, "I've never seen it this close."

Her glance was sharp. "You haven't been across it yet?"

"No."

"You've been out here since August, and you haven't been across the Bridge?"

"Not yet."

She didn't reply to that, just tacked the boat to bring it in closer to one of the pilings. He stood up and stared hard overhead. "What are you thinking?" she asked.

"I always wanted to be an engineer." She didn't reply to that, wasn't sure it needed a reply, and he went on after a minute. "An aerospace engineer. I wanted to design planes, or maybe even spacecraft for NASA, if I got lucky. But seeing this . . . it's amazing, y'know?"

"One of the engineering marvels of the Twentieth Century." She made it sound like a tour guide blurb.

He glanced around. "But it is. I mean, that's said so often, it's a cliché, but" - he looked back up at the monstrosity looming ahead of them - "it really is."

She moved to stand beside him and study his face. Rapt was the best word she could think of. "You really get off on concrete and steel, huh?"

That elicited a grin. "Sometimes."

"You said you wanted to be an engineer, but not like you were planning to be one."

And looking down, he said, "I'm not. I'm a math and education major."

"As in becoming a math teacher?"

"Yeah, exactly."

"Why'd you quit engineering? You haven't been at college long enough to have flunked out of the classes."

He shook his head and sat down again on a bench, opening the cooler to fetch a Coke. Minutes stretched before he finally replied to her question. She'd assumed he hadn't planned to reply at all. "I changed my mind," he said. "About engineering. I want to teach high school."

"It sounded to me like you wanted to be an engineer."

His smile was wistful; it turned up just the corners of his full mouth. "I did. But things change."

"Change how?"

Eyeing her, he sipped from the shiny red can. She usually cat-footed around the territory of his personal life, so her question now caught him by surprise. Maybe she hadn't meant to pry, or maybe she'd simply grown tired of peeking in the windows of his isolation. He pondered how to answer and finally opted for honesty, up to a point. He tapped the edge of his glasses. "These."

"What do they have to do with engineering? I thought you said you were just light sensitive?"

"I am. But, well . . . ." he trailed off, then concluded simply, "My sight is different now. There are some things I just can't do anymore. And I do want to teach." All of which statements were true, although only the last was a direct reason for his change of plans. His full motivations weren't something he could share, and he took refuge in his handicap, trusting that natural embarrassment would prevent her from inquiring further. With EJ, it wouldn't have worked. But with Lee, fences were usually respected.

And Jesus Christ, he wondered, when was he going to level with EJ? Ever? The longer it went, the harder it would be, but also, the less inclined he was to tell. The risk of losing that friendship, his only real emotional tie at Berkeley, was simply too great for him to contemplate.

For her own part, Lee pondered what he'd said, and also wondered - not for the first time - how much his disability had altered his life. At their very first band rehearsal, he'd explained - nonchalantly - about the glasses, and it hadn't struck her as significant at the time. Significance had emerged slowly, like the constant pound of the surf, eating away at stone. She'd never seen his eyes, and maybe that was a good part of her fascination with him, that lure of the unknown. But it was also the root of her diffidence. Unlike his ebullient friend, she found him difficult to interpret and occasionally elusive, such as now.

She let the matter be, though, and returned to steering the boat, bringing them under the bridge close to the south spire. He stood up again, Coke can forgotten in his hand, and just studied the elaborate red iron weave. Tacking around in the water beyond, she headed back under again, this time, right down the middle, and then they headed back south towards Oakland. She knew a few quiet places where boat traffic ran low, and she picked one to anchor, so they could eat: turkey sandwiches, store-bought stuffing, cold rolls and the pumpkin pie. She sat beside him on the deck bench, close enough that their thighs brushed, bare skin against bare skin. He had fuzzy legs, and she could see the stubble of beard on his jaw, heavier than she might have expected with his fine skin. Turning at one point, he caught her staring at him, but didn't object, just stared back through the glasses. This was the corner. Did she want to look around to the other side? She thought that maybe she did. And maybe he did, too. Leaning in, she brushed her lips over his, and he didn't pull away. He smelled like the onion in the dressing, and pumpkins, and salt water.

"I'm not in love with you," she whispered, because she didn't want any misunderstandings.

"I know," he replied, and as honesty required honesty, he added, "I'm not in love with you, either."

"Good. I won't get involved with a band member."

She watched him consider that, and though his eyes were hidden, his mouth told a story as he chewed it over. "This isn't getting involved?"

"No. It's scratching an itch. A one-time thing."

"I thought that was usually the guy's line."

She shrugged. "So, I think like a guy."

"No. Not really." But he was smiling, and he obviously didn't consider that an insult.

"I'm not some sentimental Barbie!"

"I never said you were. You still don't think like a guy." He frowned. "Why? Do you want to?"

She didn't reply, didn't want to reply, so she kissed him again, and he let her, though his own mind was back on what she'd just told him. Finally, he drew away to say, "Being a guy isn't all it's cracked up to be, Lee. There's a lot of pressure on you."

Her dark grey eyes hooded slightly and her chin went up. "Did you ever want to be a woman?"

He blinked. "No."

"So you like being a guy?"

"I don't really have much choice. But yeah, I guess so."

Pulling all the way out of his grasp, she leaned up against the edge of the boat. "Men never want to be women. They shy from the whole idea of it, because - even if you won't admit it - the idea of being female is degrading, isn't it? Who'd want to be a girl if he didn't have to?"

She rose abruptly then and went to mess with the sails and start hoisting the anchor. Bewildered and a bit put off by her anger - and her claims - he stared hard at the leftover pie. Finally, he said, "That's not entirely true, y'know. For some guys, maybe it is, but that's not why I never thought about being a woman. I just . . . never thought about it. I like being a guy. But that doesn't mean I think being a woman is degrading." He grinned. "I like girls quite a lot, actually."

Her movements were almost violent as she wrapped the anchor rope. "Sexually," she snapped. "Sexually, you like girls. But you wouldn't want to _be_ one. That's like saying, 'Some of my best friends are black, but I wouldn't want to marry one.'"

Emotionally slapped, he rose up to stalk over - or stalk as well as anyone could on a boat - and grabbed her wrist. "My best friend _is_ black, in case you didn't notice. And my other best friend is a woman who happens to be a medical student _and_ a Ph.D candidate. She's one of the smartest people I know. I _like_ her, and I _respect_ her, and that has nothing to do with the fact she's got two X chromosomes."

That he was also sexually attracted to her wasn't something he wanted to admit. It didn't, to his mind, have anything to do with his friendship with Jean Grey. If anything, their friendship existed despite it.

"Maybe you're just weird, Summers," Lee was saying. "Most guys see a girl and think with their dick. They come out to rent a boat, see me behind the counter, and assume I'm some brainless bimbo who doesn't know the tiller from the boom!"

Scott let her wrist go to cross his arms. "Well, I don't know the tiller from the boom. Or I guess I do, but you know what I mean. I don't think you're brainless. Or that being a woman means you can't sail a boat. I don't make assumptions like that."

Her expression was one part amused to one part skeptical. "Oh, no? You should've seen your face when I showed up to audition for your band."

Annoyed, he threw up his hands. "Jesus H. Christ! Your name isn't exactly gender specific, Lee, and most drummers are guys. A little assumption is to be expected. Big whoop! We did ask _you_ to be in the band, not one of the other guys we auditioned, and before you say a word, we didn't ask _because_ you were a girl, either. You're not window-dressing. We askedbecause you were the best, hands down. So what if we were a little surprised when you walked in? Your gender didn't have anything to do with our decision." That wasn't entirely the truth, of course, as he and EJ _had_ discussed the matter, but in the end, it hadn't factored much into their choice, and hadn't mattered at all, since.

At least, not as far as music went. He had to admit that he'd never before considered if he were interested in getting his drummer's clothes off.

"Don't knock being a girl," he said finally. "I'm glad you are one." Then abruptly, and maybe a tad reluctantly, he reached his decision about the clothes. "And it's not because I want in your pants. In fact, I don't think sex'd be a good idea. It'd make things really . . . weird. At practice."

And a bit startled, Lee blinked. No one had ever turned her down before. Not that she offered often, but she'd never been turned down, and she couldn't decide if she were more relieved, or more insulted. To her horror, "You don't think I'm pretty?" slipped out of her mouth before she even thought about it. "Never mind," she blurted. "Stupid question. Sorry." Upset and off her stride, she tried to turn away.

"Yes, I think you're pretty." He put his body between her and the rope that would let out the mainsail, so she couldn't escape him. "I'm flattered by the offer, too - and I'm not just saying that to spare your feelings. But I don't want to have sex with you. I'd rather be friends. And band members. And a really good rhythm section. Sex would just . . . make it complicated. You said yourself that you didn't love me."

"Since when did the _guy_ want to wait until he's in love?"

"Why should that be so weird? But that's not it. I just . . . Dammit! It doesn't always have to be about sex, y'know."

She glanced up at him and the sea wind blew her curly hair back away from her face. She _was_ a pretty girl, if not a striking one, like Jean, but Jean wasn't why he couldn't love her. He couldn't love her because she didn't love herself. But he could like her, and he offered her a hand to shake. "Friends?"

She studied the hand a moment, then gripped it firmly and they shook once. "Friends," she said. "And a really good rhythm section." Grinning, he leaned in to kiss her - on the cheek.

* * *

><p>The Sunday following, when EJ returned from LA, he asked - deliberately casually - "So how did the sea date go?"<p>

"It wasn't a date, Eeej. We just went sailing."

EJ's eyebrows climbed. "Oh, really?"

"Yeah, really. Nothing happened."

"You didn't sound so sure nothing was going to happen before I left."

"Well, I didn't know, before you left. But nothing happened. And it's not going to."

Raised eyebrows lowered into a frown. "Nothing _bad_ happened, I hope."

"Nope. Nothing bad happened, either. We're just friends, Eeej. And that's all it's going to be."

And sure enough, at the next scheduled band practice, all the sexual tension had drained away. Scott and Lee were easier with each other, affectionate, but sibling-like, and EJ was relieved - not because he wished Summers ill in the romance department, but because he hadn't looked forward to being the odd-man-out in a band of three when two were sharing a bed.

A few days later, after that very practice, Scott asked EJ, "Did you ever think about being a girl?"

Taken by surprise, EJ glanced around from where he was working at his desk in their room. Summers was working at his desk, too, under the window, highlighting material in a textbook. "Not really," EJ said. "Why? Have you?"

"I hadn't." Summers' expression was distant, even without being able to see his eyes. "But now, I don't know. Isn't that a little odd, when you think about it?"

Spinning his desk chair around, EJ plopped his feet on the corner of his bed. "What brought this up, anyway?"

"A conversation. It made me think, so I asked Phoebe and Elizabeth the other day if they'd ever thought about being a guy, and they both said yeah, sure - like that was normal, to have thought about it. But I hadn't thought about it, and you said you hadn't, either. Why is that? I mean, why do women think about it and men don't?"

Tipping his head back, EJ pondered the question. "Well, I'm not sure a sample of four is a good statistic, man. You're the math major; you should know that. Anyway, our society don't exactly reward the fairer sex for being the fairer sex. I grew up with three sisters, but I wouldn't want to be a woman. Not because I think there's anything wrong with being one, but because I wouldn't want to put up with the shit that goes with it. I think it's harder, to be a girl."

"So you think it's unconscious sexism?"

"Sure, some. There's a hell of a lot more sexism and racism still in the U.S. than people like to admit. It's just gone under the porch to hide, y'know? Let's put it this way. You ever think about being black?"

"Occasionally, I guess."

"_Occasionally. _Well, I have to think about being white every day. Being black is like living in a two-story house. Upstairs is my world and downstairs is yours. I have to go downstairs all the time, but you can't never come upstairs, not really. I can tell you about it, what it's like up there, and you can get a sense of it, maybe even feel it a little, but you can't never come all the way up the steps. Being a woman must be like that. We don't have to think much about what it's like to be a girl, but they have to live in our world, y'know? Growing up, when my sisters started talking 'bout girl stuff . . . man, I was _out_ the door! It was like I was afraid I was going to catch cooties, or be a sissy or something, if I hung around. Kinda stupid, now, but that says a lot, don't it?"

Summers was nodding, and the strangest expression had come over his face. "There are a lot of two-story houses like that," he said.

"Yeah. There are."

"And you'd be willing to tell me what it's like to be upstairs in yours?"

"If you really want to hear. It might not always be easy to hear. You can't take it personal."

"I won't. And yes, I'd like to hear."

"It's a deal then, slim-boy." And EJ grinned at him. Summers grinned back.

* * *

><p>"Scott! Scott! We're over here!"<p>

Scott looked around, trying (somewhat vainly) to see over the heads of people exiting his gate at JFK International Airport. It was a week before Christmas and crowds were predictably thick, people dressed in heavy coats against the New York weather and toting bags of presents that bumped along awkwardly in their wake. Finally, he spotted Jean jumping up and down and waving frantically, Warren beside her. Warren's gold hair shone under the lights, and he was wearing sunglasses in the crowd; Summers was unsure if that were an attempt to hide his identity, or to make Summers feel less the odd man out. In any case, he pushed through towards them both, dragging his carry-on after him, and - to his astonishment - Jean engulfed him in a full-body hug as soon as he reached them. Platonic though the hug might have been, he was delighted, and buried his face in her hair. Then Warren moved in to hug him, too, and Scott was mindful of the honor. There were few people alive whom Warren Worthinton III trusted enough to let them hug him, and that had nothing to do with the tell-tale bulge of a leather rack that pinned his wings beneath his jacket.

"Your plane was _so_ late," Jean was saying," we were starting to wonder if you'd get here at all today, or be stuck overnight in Chicago."

"Sorry," Summers said, releasing Warren.

"Don't apologize, silly." Jean whacked him on the arm. "It's not your fault!"

"Mr. Responsible always takes the blame," Warren said, knuckling him on the head. "How was the flight? You could've let me come get you, y'know."

"I know. But it was cheaper to take a regular flight, and I didn't want to put anybody out - "

"Would you _quit_ with that already?" Warren thwacked him hard, right in the chest. "It's getting on my nerves. I don't suppose it occurred to you that I might've _liked_ to fly out there?" And that only made Scott feel all the more guilty, as it was true; Warren did like to fly, either under his own power or in the pilot seat. "Speaking of planes, though," Warren was saying, grabbing Scott's backpack without being asked - for someone used to servants, Worthington had an uncanny sense of how and when to help - "You won't believe the new baby the professor laid hands on for Hank to soup up."

"What is it?"

"My lips are sealed. I don't want to spoil the surprise, but you're gonna spaz, Gamma-gaze. I know you." And that made Scott laugh. He'd pestered Warren for the last six months to teach him to fly, enough that Warren had finally given in and signed up for a Flight Instructor course.

With the heavy traffic, it took them two and a half hours to get back to the mansion. White lights sparkled on bushes, along the gables, and around the windows, and there was a small herd of white-light frame deer poised on the lawn. One had a red nose. That struck Scott as especially funny for no good reason, and he sank down giggling in the back seat. Or maybe he was just that glad to be home. Glancing around from the front passenger side, Jean grinned at him. "You like my deer? There are thirteen of them."

"_'You know Dasher and Dancer, and Prancer and Vixen,'_" Scott sang in his best Sinatra imitation, "_'Comet and Cupid, and Donner and Blitzen. But do you recall, the most famous reindeer of all . . . ?'_" Jean was laughing. "So where's Santa?" Scott asked then in a normal voice.

"It's not Christmas yet. Santa doesn't come until Christmas."

Sitting up to lean over the seat between them, Scott spoke to Warren. "The professor isn't really going to let her put a Santa Claus on the front lawn, is he?"

"The professor would probably let her put a nude Elvis on the front lawn if she asked him nicely."

"I'd be careful, Warren," Jean said. "Or you might find a nude Elvis in your bed some morning."

"I'd rather have a nude Jean."

She laughed and swatted him, but Scott didn't find it so funny. Slumping back on Mercedes Benz leather, he crossed his arms and frowned out a back window, feeling possessive and absurd for it at the same time. While he doubted he would ever have the good fortune to wake up to a nude Jean, he'd supposed - foolishly perhaps - that such fantasies belonged to him alone, and he resented the idea that any other man might dare to undress her in his mind's eye. No other man would ever worship her the way Scott Summers did.

By the time they'd parked the car and carried Scott's bags upstairs, it was approaching midnight. Hank had fallen asleep on the den sofa under the blinking lights of a Christmas tree, a book spread spine-up over his belly and his mouth open. Frank and Ororo were still awake, and bounded up to ambush Scott with a simultaneous hug right in the den doorway. All the noise woke Hank, who struggled to sit and find his glasses. Then all six of them went down the hall to the kitchen, circling about the little table, drinking hot chocolate or cider, and eating the Christmas cookies Frank's mother had made. Everyone was talking at once, six mutant siblings, each trying to out-shout the other in their excitement to say everything at once. There was a cinnamon candle burning warm on the green tablecloth, and someone - probably Jean - had strung white mini-lights above the pantry. Ororo wore a halo of silver tinsel on her silver hair, and Hank helped Warren out of his wing rack, freeing white feathers to sweep up and out like the incarnation of a holiday card. Charles Xavier entered in the midst of the commotion, but sat in his chair in the doorway for a long moment, watching. They were all too busy catching up to notice him, and to the end of his days, he would count that evening as among his more precious memories. His children were all home, and they were safe, and they were happy. However many more might pass through his halls, these were the first, and dear to his heart. They would embody his dream.

"Are there any cookies left for me?" he asked finally, and wheeled into the room.

* * *

><p>"So, what do you think?" Hank asked as the door to the hangar bay swished open to reveal the mansion's newest prize: sleek, black, and capable of over mach three, when in condition - which at the moment, it wasn't. Warren was with them, leaning up against the opposite wall, wings flat behind him, arms crossed, grinning at Summers' slack-jawed shock.<p>

"Holy _fuck_!" Summers muttered, moving into the bay like a sleepwalker, eyes on the new jet. "Where _in hell_ did you get a Blackbird?" If the USAF had any idea that one of their most prized planes was sitting in the basement of a mansion in Westchester, Summers didn't want to think about the pinecones the high brass would be shitting.

"The professor has his connections," Hank replied.

"In other words, you're not going to tell the air force brat."

"Mmm" - Hank was frowning, hunch-shouldered and slightly uncomfortable - "Charles thought it might be best if you didn't know."

"Christ, Hank. You think I'd tell my father what you've got here?" He turned around to look at the other two. "The professor might have connections, but this plane is freakin' _illegal_ for a private citizen to possess." He pointed back at the black silhouette. "That cost thirty-four-million dollars of tax money! It belongs to the US government!"

Hank and Warren exchanged a glance. Neither of them had counted on an angry Scott. An excited Scott, a delirious Scott, a nagging-for-the-next-three-weeks Scott . . . but not an angry Scott.

But Summers had just begun. "Where do you think you're going to get JP-7 fuel to fly her? Or the highly specialized components to replace anything that breaks down? The local Ace Hardware? Or how about a flight suit! You can't hit 80,000 feet in shorts and an Izod! Good God! That is the fastest plane the air force ever built. Do either of you think you can actually _fly_ it? The men who fly that plane go through months and months of specialized training! There are thirty-two of these in existence, or thirty-two that were built. That's _it_. The molds were broken. Twelve are lost. How dare you take one of the twenty left, to be some . . . toy!" Summers was literally shaking with fury.

"Scott, calm down." Henry approached to put big hands on Scott's shoulders, and Warren was inching back out the door, inclined to bolt for cover. Scott's eyes were bright red behind his glasses. "We don't consider it a toy," Hank went on. "And trust me, the government has been compensated. Plus, of those twenty left, how many are sitting in museums, or decommissioned in hangars?"

"Hank, it's not just the compensation! That's a highly specialized aircraft of which there isn't an endless supply! If the country has to go to war again, we might _need_ it. It belongs to the people of the United States. It doesn't belong to us." His shoulders sagged, and Henry could tell he was seriously distraught. Whatever the tension between he and his father, scratch the boy and he was still air force. Jean - who'd been working downstairs in the lab - had come running when she'd heard their raised voices. Now, Henry glanced around at her, unsure what to do, and she approached carefully, as one might with a spooked horse.

"Scott," she said, "would it help if you knew this isn't a plane that anyone thinks still exists? Nobody on a base is going to wander into a hangar and find his plane missing."

He stared at her. She could feel the weight of it, even if she couldn't see his eyes. And for the first time, she really, really regretted not being able to see his eyes. They still glowed behind ruby quartz, but not so brightly. "Where did you get it? I have to know, Jean."

"It came off the floor of the ocean. Hank had to put one of the wings back on it."

"All the instruments are new," Hank added, "or will be, when I finish with it. The whole cockpit is being redesigned. It wasn't usable, Scott. It was a salt-water-logged shell."

He looked back at it. "You mean it's one of the lost ones." It was a statement rather than a question.

"Yes."

And that was the moment of change. Turning, he walked over to it, reaching up to run a hand over the black titanium hull like he might caress a cat, or a lover. "So somebody found you, Pretty Girl? Imagine that. You're still in one piece." Then, calling over his shoulder, "Getting our hands on JP-7 fuel isn't going to be easy, y'know!"

"The engines were - and still are - a mess. We have to rebuild them entirely. I'm going to see if we might be able to use a different fuel."

"Not and hit much over mach two. They had to design the Habu's fuel special so it could be hydraulic fluid, too."

Hank rolled his eyes, but he also exchanged a glance with Jean, and blew out in relief. It would be okay.

* * *

><p>Scott lay dozing on a bench in the arboretum, right in a shaft of sunlight. If his body had needed to adjust to the different quantity of sunlight in California, coming back here felt a bit like withdrawal and Ororo had compared him to a cat, always looking for a few rays to sleep in. Just now, though, he was here because Ro had asked him to keep her company while she worked in the garden. She'd appropriated the abandoned arboretum within a month of her arrival last summer and Scott was amazed at the change in just that short time; some people were born with a green thumb. Now, she made her way from bed to bed, babying her plants, while he dozed on a bench. 'Company' for Ro meant his presence, not necessarily endless chatter, and she came to him when she wanted relief from Frank's incessant need to impress her. 'I love him the way he is,' she'd told Scott just a few days before. 'I wish he would not try so hard.'<p>

'He just wants to be the best he can for you,' Scott had explained. He understood all too well Frank's behavior with Ororo; he felt the same around Jean.

But Ororo had replied, matter-of-factly, 'He already is the best. He does not need to prove himself to me,' and Scott had been touched at the same time he'd been deeply jealous, wondering if he ever would be lucky enough to hear a woman say that about him.

Now, getting bored with his nap and thinking again about his conversation with Lee, and with EJ, he hauled himself up to wander over to where Ro was kneeling beside a bed of winter-dormant begonias, doing something incomprehensible with a long stretch of what looked like black tape. At his approach, her head tilted sideways slightly, but she didn't look around at him. "Did you ever think about being a guy?" he asked her.

At that, she did look around at him, her brown eyes amused. "Is that idle curiosity, or did you have a reason you wanted to know?"

Feeling funny looming over her, he squatted down and clasped his hands together in front, for balance. "I have a reason. But answer me first, before I tell you."

"Then you must clarify. Have I wondered what men think - or _if_ men think?" She gave him a wicked smile. "Or have I wondered what a male body would feel like from inside? Or have I wanted to _be_ a man?"

Pursing his lips, he frowned. That was all a good deal more specific than he'd considered. "I don't know. All of the above."

"Then your answer is yes, yes, and no."

"So you've never wanted to be a man?"

"No. Why would I?"

He plopped back on the tile sidewalk, and told her about his conversation with Lee Forrester. Ro listened patiently, and Scott wondered why he was telling her all this, instead of Jean, or Hank, or even Warren or Frank. But Hank would try to analyze it, Frank would probably feel guilty about it, Warren would find it curious but not important, and Jean. . . . He wasn't sure what Jean would think, or say. But Ororo would give him a straight answer.

"It is not a kind world for women, sometimes," she said now. "Some think they must compete with other women for a man's attention, and are incomplete without it. Others think they must become honorary men, to be worth anything." She tilted her head and was silent for almost a full minute. Finally, she said simply, "I think that is sad." And she turned back to her garden. He waited, but she didn't elaborate, and finally, he stood up to walk away.

* * *

><p>"Hey, I was looking for you."<p>

Glancing around, Scott watched Jean approach through blowing snow, picking her way amid the dead plants of the back garden plaza. "I guess you found me," he said.

"What are you doing out here? It's snowing, Scott."

"I noticed." His voice was dry. "And I'm thinking."

"About?" She stopped in front of him, her hands shoved in the pockets of her heavy jacket and white flakes starring her dark auburn hair.

"You promise you won't laugh?" he asked.

"I promise I'll try. Now come on - spill, boy-o."

"Did you ever think about being a guy? I mean, did you ever want to be a guy?"

Eyebrows climbing at that, Jean turned and seated herself on the cold bench beside him, huddling down against his side. "I don't have to think, Scott. There was a time when I couldn't stay in my own head. Or rather, I couldn't keep others out of it."

That hadn't occurred to him. "So you mean you know both sides?"

"More or less, yes."

"Well, would you want to be a guy?"

Smiling, she shook her head. "No. I want to be Jean." She eyed him sidewise, still smiling. "It's not 'male' or 'female,' you know. There are some differences, and they're real enough. They shape us. But in the end, we're all a bit more than an X or Y chromosome. My name is Jean, and _that's_ who I am, just as Scott is more than his gender. People are too inclined to see the obvious differences and miss the important ones, I think." She stood abruptly and snagged his hand. "Come on, I want to show you something. Let's get out of the snow."

And with her holding his hand, he wasn't inclined to object to being led back inside, and up to her room. Her bags were packed, he saw, and he realized that she must have come out to tell him goodbye before heading north to join her family for Christmas. Hank had left for Illinois the day before, and Warren was leaving tomorrow, Christmas Eve.

Jean had gone to her bookshelf to pull down a book, flipping through it to one of several dog-eared pages. "The professor gave me this as a graduation present when I told him I wanted to study mutant genetics. He said I might find inspiration in it, but he also told me never to forget that we're _all_ human. Here, read what I marked." Scott accepted the book and checked the title - a collection of works by MLK - and then looked down the page to the highlighted section.

_The system of slavery and segregation caused many Negros to feel that perhaps they were inferior. This is the ultimate tragedy of segregation. It not only harms one physically, but it injures one spiritually. But through the forces of history, something happened to the Negro. He came to feel that he was somebody. He came to feel that the important thing about a man is not the color of his skin or the texture of his hair, but the texture and quality of his soul._ "What he says there" - she pointed with a finger - "could apply to all the surface differences that we divide ourselves by. Are they that important? Black or white, male or female, mutant or non-mutant . . . in the end, I think it's the texture and quality of our soul that matters, don't you? The rest of it shapes us - it's important - but it doesn't _define_us. We're each unique. And special."

Scott thought about Lee, and EJ, and closed the book to look up at her. "Can I borrow this?"

"Sure."

He glanced at her packed luggage. "You have to go home, don't you?"

"Yeah. My family's expecting me. You knew that."

"I'll miss you. I got you a Christmas present. Do you want it before you go?"

She smiled; it was wistful, and sweet. "I'm driving back down here on Christmas night; it's only a few hours. I'll get it then." And she stepped in, wrapping an arm around his shoulders and pulling him close to kiss his cheek. "I have a present for you, too. But you'll have to wait."

He didn't need a present, he thought as he helped her carry her bags down to her car. If she came back on Christmas, he'd have everything he wanted.

* * *

><p><strong>Notes:<strong> The quotation comes from Martin Luther King's "Out of Segregation's Long Night: an Interpretation of a Racial Crisis," _The Churchman_, February, 1958. Information on the SR-71 comes from Colonel Richard H. Graham's book about it. Regarding Lee Forrester . . . _Accidental_ was actually my first intended appearance of Lee. But when Josh first asked for a Lee story, I doubted this was quite what he had in mind, and it got me thinking of other possibilities. So I imported Lee into the _Ultimate_ Universe as a major character, instead of a secondary player. As it turned out, **_Eros on Trial_** was finished and posted first.


	7. Living Upstairs

"So you still haven't told him."

"What am I supposed to tell him? Oh, by the way, did you know I could rip a hole through the wall if I stumble and my glasses slip? Come on. I like him, and I'd like to keep him as a roommate."

Jean swiveled her chair all the way around and bent to clasp her hands on her knees, staring Scott down. She'd been working in the lab on the UNIX Sun station, assembling data to elucidate specific nucleotide sequences and their distribution in mutant genome samples. It might, she'd told Scott, give some clue as to the evolution of mutant characteristics. But Scott wasn't even sure what a nucleotide _was_, much less what it had to do with mutant evolution. He considered asking her to explain it to him, but doubted the diversion tactic would work.

"Scott," she said now, "everything you've told me about your roommate makes him sound like an exceptional person. More to the point, if you do indeed _like _him and want to remain his friend, then you need to tell him the whole truth. There's a point past which being careful slips over into simply being dishonest."

She was right, he thought, but it wasn't her neck on the line, and he almost muttered, 'Easy for you to say,' but bit his tongue. As if reading his mind - although he knew she couldn't do that anymore - she added, "I know it's a risk. But real friendship often is. It means opening yourself up to get hurt, and that takes courage. Don't be reckless, of course, but don't be so cautious that you close yourself in. Think about it, okay?"

"Okay. I'll think about it."

That had been Scott Summers' last private conversation with Jean Grey before returning to Berkeley. Despite the fact that Scott had a round-trip ticket, Warren insisted on flying him to the West Coast personally, putting him in the co-pilot's seat of the little Lear jet and using that opportunity to teach him about cockpit controls. Of course Summers already knew most of them, but he thought that Warren enjoyed the telling, so he kept his mouth shut and listened.

He and EJ arrived back on the same day - EJ with a car - and they promptly returned to their routine of sleeping late, noodling at music, staging bottle rocket wars on the quad, and harassing Phoebe and Elizabeth in the double next door - all between classes, of course. Thanks largely to EJ's natural affability, Scott had been integrated at last into dorm life. It helped that he was good at math and willing to tutor his dorm mates, yet his primary reputation wasn't as the Norton Hall math geek, or even as the guy who always wore shades. He was the biting white half of the infamous Salt and Pepper, Pranksters Extraordinaire.

If most of their practical jokes had been on the small scale, at the tail end of the previous semester, when everyone had been panicking over final exams, Scott and EJ had snuck out in the middle of the night (wearing gloves) to put industrial-strength cellophane over all the building exits, and then had set off the fire alarms. Rushing out of rooms and down halls, Students had thrown open the stairwell exits only to smack into cellophane with "Gotcha!" and "Relax! Go to it!" penned in magic marker around the edges of the clear plastic . . . along with smiley faces.

It had done much to lighten the mood around the place, though the university police hadn't been so amused. Without fingerprints, they hadn't been able to positively identify the culprits, even if most of the students had a good hunch who the culprits _were_. As no permanent harm had been done, it was let go, but one of the cops had gathered all the students together out on the lawn to say, "Part of a good practical joke is knowing how far to take it, and knowing what isn't so funny. With the circus going on, somebody probably didn't get to study for a test tonight."

And so, more ashamed than triumphant, Scott and EJ had gone back to their room and been very good boys for the last few days of that semester. They hadn't intended to create quite the stir that had resulted; they simply hadn't thought that far, which was, of course, the difference between maturity and immaturity, Scott mused later - the wisdom to factor in the possible consequences. But the Great Cellophane Escapade had guaranteed their reputation, and Christmas break had eased their contrition, so they returned for spring in rare high form, like a pair of over-excited puppies. Prudence made them trim back their trouble-making to smaller venues: putting green Kool-Aid mix in the showerheads in the bathrooms, or painting Phoebe's soap with clear nail polish, or gluing coins to the dining room floor. The latter wasn't particularly original, but they still laughed themselves silly, at least until they saw Phoebe approaching from the checkout line, pretty face dark and mouth tight with irritation. Then they beat a hasty retreat. As it had turned out, the bar of soap that Scott had painted hadn't been Zest, or even Dove, but some seven-fifty-a-shot special cosmetic cleanser.

"Didn't you notice the name on the damn bar was some ritzy make-up company?" EJ had asked Scott later.

"I'm not the one who has sisters! How was I supposed to know 'Clinique' meant anything?"

Throwing up his hands, EJ had said, "Ain't you ever walked through the cosmetics section of Robinsons-May? It's usually at the damn store entrance, man!"

"Well, yeah. But fuck it, I wasn't looking at names on the bottles!"

"You are _so_ freakin' clueless, Slim."

Thus, just four weeks into the semester, Salt and Pepper had managed to land on Phoebe's bad side, at least until Scott had gone out to purchase a new bar of soap for her. That had been Lee's suggestion.

"So what do I do to make it up to her?" he'd asked Lee after practice one Sunday.

"Did you try replacing the soap you ruined?"

"Ah - no."

"Well, why don't you start with the obvious then?" Lee had replied, adding in disgust, "_Men_."

Scott had refrained from pointing out the fact that she'd claimed to think like a man back in November. People didn't always appreciate having their inconsistencies highlighted. Instead, he'd taken her advice and replaced Phoebe's soap, and all was forgiven. He even got a peck on the cheek for his trouble.

The same night that Scott gave Phoebe her soap, he called Jean for their weekly chat. They exchanged email daily, and once a week, he called to listen to her bemoan the tedium of finding expressed genes and protein binding motifs in her nucleotide fragments. And she listened to him bemoan his English literature class. "I don't get it," he told her. "I mean, we're reading _The Power and the Glory_ by Graham Greene, and I don't get it! There's this priest down in Mexico, where they're doing a purge of Christians, but instead of standing up for what he believes, he runs away! And he's supposed to be the novel's hero? What kind of hero is that? And he's a drunk, too!"

EJ, who'd been sitting at his desk by the door, working on a presentation for his communications class, half-turned to call out - loudly enough to be heard by Jean - "I been telling Slim here that the guy's not _supposed_ to be some Superman. That's the damn point! He's just a guy, like the rest of us. He don't wanna die, but he winds up getting caught 'cause he keeps stopping to help people. He's not making some grand stand based on a bloodless ideal, man. He's doing what he ought to be doing as a priest. He cares about people. Holiness ain't the _trappings_. It's in your heart. It's about compassion. That's what Jesus taught. _Be_ right - inside. Don't just act right."

"You see what I have to put up with in a roommate?" Scott said, only half-serious. "He reads this stuff and he gets it. I'd be _so_ dead in this class . . . "

Jean was laughing on the other end of the line. "Then be glad you're both in the class together."

"I am."

"And have you told him yet?"

"That I'm glad we're in the same class?"

"No, have you told him? About that?"

Scott didn't reply to that for a full five breaths. Instead, he glanced guiltily towards EJ's back; his roommate had returned to work on his presentation. "Not yet. I will."

"Soon, boy-o." And she hung up.

"Bye," he whispered to the dead line, and set the ear-piece back in the cradle, sighing.

When he spun his chair around, he found EJ watching him over a shoulder. "She may as well put a dog collar on you with a tag that says, 'Call Jean Grey if lost.'" He was grinning. Scott shot him a friendly bird, which only made him grin wider. "You are so wrapped around her finger, Slim. She's your goddess."

Blushing bright red, Scott looked away, out the window over his desk. The sun had nearly set. "Yeah, well, I can't help it. She's just so . . . _amazing,_ Eeej. She's just amazing."

"Hey - I'm not making fun of you, man. Not seriously. And it don't seem to me that she minds you panting after her any too much."

Summers glanced back at his friend. "You don't think so?"

"Oh, come on! How long you guys usually talk on the phone? At least half an hour. _Every damn week_. If she wanted to ditch you, she wouldn't be chatting you up that way."

"I'm just her friend."

"Yeah, so? There something wrong with that? I mean, I know you'd like it to be more, but she is, what, twenty-seven? Be real, dude. Friendship's nothing to sneeze at. And there are some mighty pretty girls a little closer to your age around here. In case you ain't noticed, Phoebe's been over a lot since the semester started - well, except when she was pissed over the soap."

Scott's eyebrows hiked. In fact, he _hadn't_ noticed, though once he would have. And he probably should have. Lee's fleeting interest in him had demonstrated that women might still find him attractive, glasses or no. "I figured she was over here to see _you_."

But EJ just shook his head. "Don't think so. Open your eyes, slim-boy."

* * *

><p>"We got a gig."<p>

"Whoa! _Say What?_"

"We got a gig, man. Two weeks. We're playing for the Nupes frat party on Saturday. Fifty bucks a person."

Two beats went by, then three, before Scott found the wit to reply. "Whoo-hoo!" And he threw his Econ note-cards into the air, laughing and leaping off the bed to slap EJ's hands. "All right, so it's a fucking stupid frat party, but it's a gig. Did you call Lee?"

EJ was grinning, too. "Not yet; I only just got it confirmed. Came back to tell you, man." He hesitated and studied Scott. "Kappa Alpha Psi is a black frat. That bug you?"

Scott blinked. "No. Should it? As long as they don't expect me to sing hip-hop, I'm cool."

"Nobody's gonna wanna hear you rap, man; trust me. You sound like somebody stuck a damn pig poker up your white ass - stiff as a sixteen-year-old with a girlie magazine in the bathroom."

"Oh, gee thanks! I love you, too!"

"Hey, you sing great. You rap badly. We're sticking to Living Color, the Fishbones, and Hootie."

"And your stuff?"

"Yeah, and my stuff, but they're mostly gonna want to hear covers."

* * *

><p>In fact, and despite Summers' protests, EJ had harbored doubts as to whether his white band mates would be comfortable at a black frat party, but as it turned out, Summers was in his element when performing, whatever the racial makeup of the audience. The boy who, six months ago, had been ducking every social opportunity in the dorm, now hammed it up on stage. EJ had assumed he'd only sing, leaving EJ to act as front man. But Mr. Shades could put on a show with expansive gestures and friendly, teasing banter to the audience. "You like this shit," EJ said to him after the first set. They'd left the little corner of the frat house porch set aside for their instruments, but hadn't moved far into the crush of people milling about on the lawn in the dim light of a California evening. Even EJ kept apart. Black or not, he was as much a stranger here as Scott or Lee.<p>

Now, Summers shrugged and, in one swallow, polished off half the beer he'd been brought in a plastic cup. "I guess. But it's like . . . it's not me up there - just some guy with a guitar."

"The magic mic," Lee said, slipping the cup out of Summers' hand to finish it.

"Hey!"

Lee ignored his protest. "Some people freeze up when you put a mic in their hands, some dig it. You're good with a crowd, Scott. And you're also underage."

"Like_ that_ matters? You're not my mother, Aleytis. Go get your own beer."

Lee grinned. "We don't need a drunk bassist and singer. One cup an hour is all I'm letting you have."

"Man!" Summers implored the sky. "What is this? And we don't need a drunk drummer, either. Ever heard of _timing_?"

"Oh, I won't get drunk."

So the night wound down; people came and went, some weaving on their feet. Free beer induced much laughter, squealing, flirting, and a rather adolescent humor. One of the brothers walked around with a bra wrapped about his head like a diadem, and another wore a suit jacket, tie, white fedora, and no shirt. After ten, Soapbox moved their instruments inside to the frat house living room, but it did little to lessen the volume. Sound carried in the clear night air. Fortunately, the (non-frat) neighbors were either inured, indifferent or too pessimistic to call the police, so overall, their first gig was a success. They played covers for the first set, a mix of covers and originals for the second, and mostly originals for the third. No one complained - or not about the nature of their musical choices. After the final set, while they were packing up, a guy edged his way around the amplifiers to say, "You need a guitar player."

EJ and Scott paused in their equipment break down to exchange a glance. They had debated whether or not to seek a guitar player, but after the trials of finding a drummer, had ditched the idea. "Why you think we need a guitar player, brother?" EJ asked, unable to completely erase an edge of hostility from his voice.

"Hey - you're good on the boards, man; I'm not dissing you. But you need an edge. I really liked the originals you threw out, but you need an edge."

"And you think you're that edge?"

The interloper just grinned. "Try me."

EJ and Scott exchanged another glance. Their wannabe guitar player looked all of sixteen, and what he was doing at a frat party, neither could figure. Someone's little brother perhaps. He had an earnest face, slight build, neat clothing, and heavy plastic glasses.

"Let him try," Lee said from behind them. "Why not?" Then to him, she called, "We practice on Sunday afternoons. Think you can wake up in time tomorrow?"

And EJ added, "It's at the Unit Three dorms down on - "

"I know where they are. Music room under the dining hall?"

"Uh, yeah."

"I'll be there."

And he was. At two the next afternoon, he was sitting on an amp outside the front door, waiting for Scott and EJ, and Lee, to arrive, a Fender case and an effects box beside his left foot.

As it turned out, Richard Chabon had been born in Cincinnati, was twenty, a sophomore in the college of business, and the treasurer of Kappa Alpha Psi. And with his Lake Placid Blue Strat in his hands, he talked as easily as he used English. "Why ain't you already _in_ a band, man?" EJ asked - dumbfounded - after they'd heard him play.

Chabon shrugged. "I'm not interested in doing covers, or singing. I want to work on original stuff. I liked what I heard of yours, and you already have a singer."

And so Soapbox acquired their fourth and final member.

* * *

><p>"Relax, man. I've been inside a church before. Not even that long ago. I know how to act."<p>

"Well, yeah, that wasn't what worried me, but . . . You're not exactly into it, and . . . ."

"Look, Eeej. Your dad's the preacher. It'd be pretty rude of me to visit over break and not go to church with you. It's no big deal." And Scott turned back to the dresser mirror to straighten his collar. "Do I look okay?"

Before EJ could reply, Clarice - the eldest (and shortest) of EJ's three sisters - stuck her head around the doorway. "You're gonna be late, guys." Both boys jerked about. "Put it in gear, okay?" Seeing Scott in his suit, she pulled in her chin and raised both brows. "Wow. You look very handsome, Mister Summers." And then she was gone. They could hear the click of her heels as she climbed the three wooden stairs back into the den from the remodeled garage where EJ had his bedroom.

"The Clarie Seal of Approval," EJ told him. "I guess you pass muster. She'd sure as hell tell you if you didn't."

Scott laughed. "I kind of got that impression."

In truth, he found all three Haight girls rather charming. Clarice was the most like her brother, albeit more serious. Only fourteen months younger than EJ, she was the intelligent one, set to graduate as class valedictorian. "She wants to be an astrophysicist," EJ had told him on the way down from Berkeley, making Scott spit coke out his nose all over the dashboard of EJ's car. "Christ!" was all he'd replied. It had seemed to Scott a prospect as daunting as Jean and her double doctorate.

But if Clarice was the family brain, then JaLisa was the family clown. The youngest at not quite fourteen, she seemed to assume that her designated role in inner-family dynamics was comic relief. She was also, along with EJ (and their mother) the most musical. Me'Shell, the middle daughter, was - like many middle children - quiet, reserved, and inclined to act as the peacekeeper. JaLisa was probably the prettiest, but Scott preferred Clarice's smooth braids, luminescent smile and witty repartee. He also found himself spending almost as much time in her company over that week as he did with her brother. They sat on the hood of EJ's car in the drive, watching traffic go by and debating old, classic movies and partial differential equations, Bill Clinton's scheduled trip to visit Nelson Mandela and the Clinton-Paula Jones scandal. On Friday before supper, EJ cornered him about the matter in EJ's bedroom. "You got a thing for brainy girls, slim-boy?"

"Huh?" Scott turned from the mirror. It had begun to startle him, to walk by and see white skin.

EJ shut the door that led upstairs back into the house proper, then confronted his roommate. "Are you hitting on my sister?"

Taken completely by surprise, Scott's mouth dropped open. "Uh. Not intentionally." But then a surge of anger replaced the shock. "Why? Would it be a problem if I were?"

Shaking his head and crossing his arms, EJ eyed him sidewise. "You're nuts over that Jean chick back in New York. I don't want to see you leading Clarie on, and hurting her. She's smart about a lot of things, but sometimes she's so smart she's not smart. Y'know what I mean?"

Picking up his watch from the dresser, Scott slipped it on so he wouldn't have to meet EJ's eyes. "Yeah, I know. And I'm not hitting on her. I just enjoy her company. _You_ were the one who said I ought to look for someone closer to my age than Jean - "

"Yeah. But - "

"But it's different if it's your sister."

Feeling slightly hypocritical but driven to make his point anyway, EJ shrugged and picked up dirty clothes, tossing them in the hamper. "I just don't want to see her get hurt. You're smooth, slim-boy. You know how to talk to girls." He eyed Scott again. "How many chicks did you date in high school, man?"

"I don't know. I wasn't making notches on my bedpost."

"Yeah, but you dated enough that you'd actually have to stop and count, wouldn't you? Clarie's gone out with two, maybe three guys." He paused, then just said it, "She's already half fallen for you, man. Back off, okay?"

And Scott didn't know how to reply to that. Instead, he'd busied himself fastening his watch while EJ observed a moment, then ducked out again. Dinner was tense, sitting between EJ and Violet Haight with Clarice across the table, smiling at him every time he spoke to her. EJ was right. The girl was half-way into a crush and he hadn't even noticed, just as with Phoebe - and he wasn't sure if his blindness owed more to the glasses or to his fixation on Jean Grey.

But it made him ponder the whole situation. And watch Clarice. The light above the long dining table fell soft on the curve of her cheek and shone in her dark eyes. Maybe EJ had a point about finding a girl his own age. Jean might be fond of him, but only as a little brother. It had been almost a year since he'd met her; he needed to get past his obsession. Clarice was smart, and honest, and good-hearted, and she had ambitions for her life . . .

. . . and she was also EJ's little sister, and EJ was watching him. Sighing, he turned his attention back to the generic broccoli-chicken-rice casserole that Violet had made for supper. She was watching him, too, he noticed - rather belatedly - and when supper was over and conversation had wound down, she abruptly handed him her plate. "Scott, you're almost a part of the family, so you may as well get your share of chores." Her smile was both wicked and wise. "Clarice, why don't you show him how to run the dishwasher?"

"Oh, yes!" JaLisa shouted in glee, making victory fists and hopping up to say, "I'm going to call Val - bye," before her mother could change her mind. It had been her night on kitchen clean-up.

In shock, and with Violet Haight's dinner plate still in his hands, Scott watched JaLisa disappear. EJ seemed ready to say something, but Jeremiah interrupted him. "I need you out back in the shed, Elijah."

So Scott wound up with Clarice in the little kitchen, loading a nearly archaic dishwasher and trying to decide if EJ's mother had really just set him up with her eldest daughter? After a while, he quit worrying about it and just enjoyed Clarice's company, until she left to finish her homework; her school wasn't on spring break. EJ came in as Scott was filling the soap tray. Snapping the tray lid shut, he held up both hands - box of Cascade still in one - and spoke softly. "I'm not after your sister, man. Your mom did that."

Arms crossed, EJ leaned up against a counter and sighed, replying, "I know. And . . . okay. Fine. Dad reminded me that she's a big girl now." For a full minute he didn't speak; he and Scott merely studied one another. "Are you interested in her?"

Closing the dishwasher door, Scott stood and glanced out the kitchen door into the dining room. No one was there. He could hear JaLisa on the phone in the hall, laughing loudly, and out in the living room, the television blared the local news with the requisite burglaries and murders. This was LA. "I honestly hadn't thought about it. Not until tonight."

"You go after her, you'd better be good to her."

Grinning, he asked, "Is that permission or a warning?"

"Both. You know I'm better than you on the sparring mat, slim-boy. You hurt my sister, I'll drop-kick your ass all the way back to New York."

Scott frowned down at the linoleum flooring. Faced with the possibility of dating someone again, several matters loomed in stark relief. Clarice wasn't a mutant. Would she still be interested in him if she knew the real reason he had to wear the glasses? "Well she's down here and I'm up north, and even if I were interested - and maybe I am, I'm not sure - it's a long drive for a Friday night date."

"This year. She's going to be at Berkeley next fall."

Scott jerked his head up. "She is?" He hadn't heard that yet.

"Yeah, she is. Schools are fightin' over her, man. But Dad didn't want her going out of state, and he'd rather send her someplace where I can keep an eye on her."

"So she'll be at Berkeley." Scott couldn't keep the grin off his face; EJ's expression was more doubtful.

"Yeah. She'll be at Berkeley. But you remember what I said."

Scott held up his hands in surrender once more. "I hear you, I hear you!" And he shrugged. "Like I said earlier, I hadn't even thought about doing anything until _you_ brought it up." Tilting his head, he held his friends' eyes. "But I like her, and I respect her. And if she's coming to Berkeley next year, well . . . we'll see what happens. No reason to rush."

"That's for damn sure," EJ said, thinking that Summers dating his sister could wind up being even more awkward than Summers dating Lee Forrester. Then again, what if it worked out? Scott had become, in just six months, the closest friend EJ had known in years. He could think of worse people to call brother-in-law - although thinking that far in advance was rather putting the cart before the horse.

A very loud roar from the living room television caught their attention and they exited to see what was on the news. "Look at that!" Violet was saying from her perch on the sofa. A forgotten bit of cross-stitch lay in her lap. Jeremiah lounged in a recliner, book in his lap and glasses on his nose, half-reading and half-watching at the same time.

On the small television screen, a large man with shoulder-length blond hair was - quite literally - flipping over cars on a freeway somewhere . . . obviously not in California, as there was still snow on the ground. "And in Winnipeg today," the announcer was saying, "Evening rush-hour traffic was completely halted when an unknown male walked onto the Pembina Highway near the University of Manitoba campus and began overturning vehicles."

"What the fuck?" EJ muttered beside Scott.

"Language, Elijah," his mother said.

On the news video, Canadian police had arrived, attempting to drive the tall blond man away from the halted traffic so that ambulances could get to the injured in pop-can-crumpled vehicles. "The assailant was finally forced into the surrounding forest, but disappeared near the Red River before police could apprehend him. Twenty-six people were injured and ten are in critical condition at Victoria General Hospital. Authorities are seeking any information leading to the identification and apprehension of the man being called The Winnipeg Marauder."

Both Clarice and Me'Shell had wandered in now as well, to see the strange news on the TV. JaLisa remained on the phone, apparently oblivious. "Did Bigfoot suddenly decide to reveal himself?" Clarice asked, amused. "Or is this just a really weird pro-wrestling gimmick?"

And Scott Summers couldn't form words to answer her, though he feared that he did, indeed, know the answer. Instead, he sank down on the sofa beside Violet Haight and stared at the screen, his hands clasped tightly between his knees. His skin was cold, and he became aware of the ticking of the wall clock behind and above the sofa, an annoying tat-tat-tat beneath the drone of the reporter's voice.

Was that man in Winnipeg a mutant like himself? But no - not like himself, or like anyone else at Xavier's school. They didn't wander through cities, wreaking casual havoc. And he needed to talk to the professor, but couldn't think of where he'd find the privacy to do so without raising suspicion. So he sat frozen in a Los Angeles living room, watching a piped-in broadcast of a crisis that had occurred several hours earlier and a couple thousand miles further north.

". . . . like Bigfoot on speed, eh?" someone was saying into the camera while the reporter interviewed eyewitnesses.

"Whatever it is," said another man, "it needs to be caught and thrown in a cage!"

"Some kind of escaped circus freak," offered a third.

The broadcast shifted to the book-lined walls of an office. 'Dr. Rosaline Tey of the UCLA School of Medicine' said the caption under a Dr.-Ruth-clone in front of the camera. "While it's impossible to draw a definitive conclusion based on a five-minute video, this individual _may_ - I stress the _may_ - belong to a small, recent phenomenon being called 'X-Gene Manifestation.' It's a mutation at the DNA level that results in exceptional physical or mental abilities . . . ."

It was clear she was still talking, but the over-dubbed voice of a reporter cut off any elaboration. "The medical community is divided on the exact cause of these 'x-gene mutations' or how widespread the phenomenon may be in the general population, though most consider it rare. Opinion is also divided as to what kind of danger such mutated individuals might pose to normal human beings. But if he is a mutant, the Winnipeg Marauder would demonstrate that these 'mutants' can indeed be dangerous, causing injury, even death, to others."

"Good heavens," Violet was saying. "What next?" Her expression was shell-shocked. The rest of the Haights were still staring at the TV screen.

Scott opened his mouth, closed it, opened it, then closed it again. His skin was still cold and his stomach heaved and the weight of the glasses on his face was as heavy as a condemnation. Abruptly, EJ turned to look at him, and for a moment, his heart spasmed in his chest, but EJ said only, "Ain't your friend back in New York into genetics? Jean, I mean?"

"Um . . . yeah." Scott's throat was dry. They were all looking at him now.

"She know anything 'bout these mutants?"

It was an innocently tendered question, but guilt and fear and panic made Scott Summers laugh out loud. Swallowing it, he managed to say in a normal voice, "She knows a little."

"So what's the deal? She said anything to you?"

"Ah . . . um, well - I'm not exactly an expert - but it's, ah, it's just part of evolution." He paused to glance around at faces, recalling that he was in the house of a pastor. "Ah, I don't know if - "

"It's all right, Scott." An amused Jeremiah Haight cut him off before he tripped further over his own tongue. "Not everyone who believes the Bible takes it literally." He winked at his son's friend. "Science might tell us how we got here, but religion tells us why we are here. Two different questions."

Scott relaxed. "Okay. Then, like I said, I'm not an expert, and I can't explain it like Jean could, but it's really pretty simple. Some people - at this point, a really small number - are born with this extra pair of genes called X-genes. They're dormant until puberty. Then they kind of . . . wake up, and you get these changes. It can be pretty sudden, and it's usually stress triggered, but, um, some researchers" - he deliberately did not say Hank or Jean - "think it starts a while before it actually manifests, as some kind of stress build-up over a long period, getting the body ready. Then something happens - it doesn't even have to be big - and wham! The mutation appears."

"The straw the broke the camel's back?" Jeremiah asked.

"Yeah, pretty much."

"How do people know if it will happen to them?" Clarice asked, eyes wide.

"They don't," Scott said. "Not right now anyway." Seeing Clarice's dark skin go gray, Scott waved a hand in denial. "No, no! It won't happen to you, Clarie, or it would've already." Then he thought about his own mutant manifestation at his senior prom and amended, "Well, probably not. For most mutants, it happens in the mid or early teens. Researchers are trying to map it, but there aren't enough examples to even start guessing. The most anyone can say now is that there are two basic mutation types - psi mutations and physical mutations. That is, changes to the brain or changes to the body. Some mutants don't look any different, and some, well . . . " He gestured towards the television, which had now moved on to relate the weather forecast. "Some physical changes can be kinda dramatic."

"Are they all dangerous like that man?" Me'Shell asked.

"No!" Scott shook his head again emphatically. "Most aren't like that at all. They don't want to hurt people. They want to learn to control it so they _don't_ hurt people!"

And though Scott Summers didn't realize it, his 'inexpert' explanation had - some exchanges back - shifted into a convincing, if colloquial, voice of authority. That change wasn't lost on either of the elder Haights.

"Does your friend work with mutants?" Jeremiah asked, keeping his voice curious, not accusing, but Scott momentarily froze in any case. Violet and Jeremiah both noted that as well, but refrained from exchanging a glance.

"Uh, only in general," Scott said. "I mean, it's kind of a hot topic. You know - in her classes and stuff. Plus she's doing some research into evolutionary changes. So yeah, it comes up. She told me some things." Two spots of color had stained his high cheekbones, and his ears were bright pink. Seeing that, Jeremiah deftly turned the conversation to a different matter and the girls drifted back out again, to pursue whatever they'd been doing before. After a while, Scott's muscles relaxed.

The evening passed slowly, and Scott fretted until he thought enough time had passed that he could escape to use the bathroom without raising suspicions. Hurrying downstairs, he fetched his cell phone and then holed up in one of the two bathrooms to dial the mansion in Westchester. It was Frank who answered, and Scott thought belatedly to check his watch. Eight-fifteen in LA meant it was after eleven in New York. "It's me - Scott," he said into the mouthpiece. "What the _hell_ is going on up in Winnipeg?"

"No one knows," Francesco replied. "Henry and the professor have gone north with Warren to see if there is anything more to know."

"Jean didn't go?"

"No."

And Scott breathed out in relief. The idea of Jean anywhere near that big blond guy had scared him at an instinctive level. "Is he a mutant?" Scott asked.

Frank hesitated. "It is not for sure, but I think . . . yes."

Scott had caught the hesitation. "What do you know about him, Frank?"

Silence cracked out of the phone's receiver. "He is not yet a threat," Frank said finally.

"But he will be?"

"He _could_ be. You know there is nothing of certainty,_ mi amico_."

Sighing, frustrated, Scott ran a hand into his hair and tugged at it. "Okay, okay. Look, I'm at EJ's, but I'll call again on Sunday when I get back to Berkeley. If there's an emergency, though, buzz me on my cell."

"Of course."

Scott decided to stay up, hoping others would retire to bed and leave him to the TV. He wanted to catch any further reports about the incident in Winnipeg. Unfortunately, he hadn't counted on the fact that Violet Haight was as much a night owl as he. She showed no signs of heading to bed, even when the wall clock chimed one in the morning and EJ finally gave up and went out to his garage room. Scott sat next to her on the sofa, an afghan over his legs, channel-surfing with the remote and striving for unobtrusive interest. When he did finally stumble over a repeated report, Violet said, "Stop there. I'd like to hear more." So he stopped. It was just coincidence, he told himself. Why shouldn't EJ's mother be curious, too?

"He must be either very angry or very frightened," Violet said as they both watched repeating video loops of the blond man tearing through cars. Her comment startled Scott, and he glanced over.

"What makes you say that?"

"Well, in my experience, that's usually the root of violence - fear, or anger." She had dropped her eyes back to her cross-stitch, not the TV, or him. "It gets covered up with other motives, but if you peel it back, it's fear or anger. And maybe anger is just fear by another name."

Scott pondered that. It wasn't much different from what the professor believed. "So you think people can be educated out of violence?"

"Maybe. But they're more likely to be loved out of it." She glanced up at him. "Imagine looking like that poor man. Does he have a home, you think? Or anyone who might care about him? Or do people just run when they see him coming, before they know a thing about him?"

Like darts, her words struck Scott hard in the chest, making his breathing shallow.

"My husband," she went on. "You know what a good man he is. But he's a big man. And he's a black man. And sometimes when he walks into a 7-11 after dark outside black town, the help - they get real close to the counter, in case they need to push that emergency button hidden there. They don't know a thing about him but what he looks like." She was silent a moment. "It hurts, y'know? Distrust like that - it eats away at the soul. So I wonder what that poor man up in Canada feels? What does the counter help do when he walks into a 7-11 after dark?"

"'He came to feel,'" Scott quoted, "'that the important thing about a man is not the color of his skin, or the texture of his hair, but the texture and quality of his soul.'"

Violet smiled as her needle flashed in and out of white cloth, drawing black thread. "My son's been at you to read Dr. King?"

"No - Jean gave me a book of his writings. Jean . . . the woman I was talking about earlier."

"Ah. The one who's studying mutant genetics."

Scott opened his mouth to correct her - but he'd be lying if he did. And he wondered, suddenly, how much good any of his subterfuge had really done. As before, he became aware of the tat-tat of the wall clock, and after a minute, said, "So you don't think that guy's dangerous and should be locked up?"

"Oh, I think he's dangerous. But anyone can be dangerous, Scott. Give me a gun and I could be dangerous, too. The question is, would I be? And I guess the real question is - does that man have to be?" She shrugged and cut the thread she'd been stitching, pausing to tie it off and slip her needle through fabric holes to hold it in place until she was ready to work again. "I suppose it depends on how angry he is. Or how afraid. And a lot of that might depend on us, don't you think? Do we only see what he looks like? Or what he _is_ like?" And she stood, one palm at the small of her back as she stretched. "My, it's late. I think I'll head to bed."

Scott Summers stayed up a long time after, still channel-surfing, hoping to stumble over more information, but there was none, and finally, he went to bed himself, still thinking about what EJ's mother had said, and he continued to ponder it for the whole next week.

* * *

><p>"And where the fuck were <em>you<em>, man?" EJ asked - loudly - as soon as he unlocked their dorm room door. Summers had missed their English class, and a quiz, and that wasn't like him. EJ had conjured visions of accidents or other dire emergencies until he'd gotten back to Norton Hall only to see Summers' racing bike locked up downstairs in its usual place.

"Don't yell, please," came a voice from the bed. The room was dark, or at least dim, with the curtains shut tightly, and Summers lay on his bed, on his back, a cloth over his eyes. The room stank badly, all sweet and sharp, making EJ gag.

"God, did you _vomit_?"

"Yeah. Jesus, I'm sorry. I just . . . I'm so sick. You might want to go somewhere else tonight."

_Shit,_ EJ thought to himself. This was the fourth time Summers had suffered one of his migraines since the year had begun, but always before, the migraines had hit him in the late afternoon or early evening, and had never been this bad. Shaking his head, EJ dug through his dirty clothes for a towel. The smell told him where Summers had dumped his breakfast near the bed's foot in front of the little fridge; it had half-dried into the cheap brown carpet. Getting down on his knees, he began to clean it up.

"_Don't do that,_" Summers hissed from the bed. "You don't have to do that."

"Don't have to, no," EJ said softly. "But the longer it's on the floor, the worse the room'll smell. And you're in no shape."

"EJ."

"Shut the fuck up, Slim. You're sick."

He finished the job, though he gagged three times and almost emptied his own stomach in the process. It took two towels and a bowl of water. When he was done, he opened the windows but left the curtains shut, then seated himself carefully on the edge of his friend's bed. "You take anything for it?"

"Yes." Summers' face was pasty even in the low light and he was sweating, his jaw clenched tightly from pain.

"It's bad, ain't it?" EJ asked. Summers didn't reply. "I think you ought to go to the Tang, man. I'll drive you over there." Tang was the student health center.

"No."

"Slim-boy - "

"_No,_ EJ. I've had them this bad before. It's just . . . too much light." He was almost panting as he spoke. "It'll be better by morning."

"Maybe so, but you got a quiz to make up. You know the prof requires a legit excuse to let you retake a test. You need a doctor's note."

"Not for this. Migraines are on my disabilities form."

"Then at least let me call one of the student health workers. They're just downstairs."

"No, dammit!" And he winced. "Ow." A pause to breathe. "Just go away, okay?"

So EJ took his books next door and tried to study in Phoebe and Elizabeth's room, but they were perched cross-legged on their beds, deeply involved in a discussion of which show's heroine was tougher: _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ or _Xena: Warrior Princess_. On another afternoon, he might have found it amusing, or even joined in, but not today. Fed up, he returned to check in on Summers, who appeared to be asleep. Cautiously pulling out the chair at Summers' desk, EJ seated himself where a little late afternoon light slipped in through the curtains and he could read. He might have retreated to the lounge, but didn't want to go that far, in case Scott needed him. Breathing heavy, Summers had rolled onto his side, the white cheese cloth still over the upper half of his face. He'd said before that wearing glasses or goggles only made it hurt worse when he got these headaches. Too much weight on his eyes.

About an hour had passed when Summers suddenly said, "I need to go pee."

EJ glanced over at him. "You want help?"

"Maybe to get down there, yeah."

So EJ shut his book and helped Summers to sit up very slowly, while Scott tied the cloth over his eyes like a blindfold. Then EJ helped him stand. He was shaking and still sweaty. "I am so sorry to bug you with this," he said, an edge of both anger and real pain in his voice.

"It's not a problem, man. What do you think friends are for?"

Summers didn't reply to that. He'd been taught to stand on his own two feet, keeping pain - either physical or emotional - to himself. He might be happy to give assistance, but hated to take it unless he were utterly incapacitated. As he was now. Needing EJ's help speared his pride. Fortunately for them both, the bathrooms were close to their room, and nearly empty just now, but the bright light of the hall, the necessity of movement, and the noise of conversation or music from other rooms sawed into Summers' skull like a dull knife. As soon as he got into the restroom, the first thing he did was push his face up against the cool tile wall. "Hurts," he said. EJ almost had to carry him into a stall, which got odd looks from the few others in there.

"Bad trip?" one asked.

"It's not drugs," EJ snapped back. "He's just sick."

"Whoa," the other boy replied, holding up hands and backing out of the toilet area. "Just asking, dude. Maybe he should go to Tang?" But he was gone before EJ (or Scott) could reply.

"You don't have to hold me up; I can piss by myself," Summers said, shutting the stall door in EJ's face. Shame had rendered him rude. Taking it philosophically, EJ grabbed some paper towels from the dispenser above the sinks, in case he needed them, only to be interrupted by a crash behind. Summers had collapsed after all - fainted in fact - and EJ had to crawl under the door to get inside so he could stand him up and pull on his pants. But EJ's hands felt wrapped in gauze and a belly-deep panic caused him to fumble buttons and zippers. The stall was too narrow for two people, and the whole situation fell to the far left of absurd, but they weren't going to be laughing about this later. Conscious once more, if groggy, Summers was sobbing in humiliation like a drunk, apologizing over and over and saying he was too dizzy to stand.

"Stop it, man," EJ hissed. "Come on, stop it. You're making yourself sicker and you'll throw up again. Relax and let me take care of you. Trust me, okay? You gotta trust somebody."

Summers nodded and, in that moment, something subtle shifted. EJ felt his body relax, and he leaned his forehead into EJ's shoulder. "Okay. I trust you."

So EJ got him dressed and slipped an arm around him, walking him over to the sinks where he could wash his face with cool water, or as much of it as the cheese-cloth bared. Then he just picked him up and carried him back to their room. _He ain't heavy, he's my brother,_ he thought, trying to lighten the moment because he was scared out of his mind.

After getting Summers back into bed, EJ did something he knew wasn't kosher, but he was desperate, and one step away from calling an ambulance. Taking Scott's cell phone off his desk, he went out into the hall and pushed "1" on the speed dial, waiting while the phone rang, and breathing out in relief when a woman answered, "Hello?"

"Is this Jean Grey?" he asked.

Silence. "Yes. Who is this?"

"EJ Haight - Scott's roomy. Man, I need your help. He's really sick and I don't know what's up but he won't let me take him to the school health center or call a student health worker and I'd call an ambulance but I thought I'd try you first and see what you thought I should do, if there was anything else to do, and - "

"_EJ!_" she interrupted on the other end. "_Stop! _Calm down."

He stopped and caught his breath. "Okay."

"Good. Now listen to me. You cannot take Scott to a hospital. Do you understand? Do _not_ take him to a hospital! They won't know what to do and could wind up hurting him. I need you to answer some questions for me. Can you do that?"

"Yeah."

"Then tell me what, exactly, is happening."

"It's one of his headaches, but _really bad_. It must have hit right after breakfast 'cause he missed class. He threw up, too, and he just totally flipped me out in the bathroom by fainting."

"He fainted? Tell me, how many times did he vomit?"

"Just the once."

"Does he know where he is and who he is, or is he delirious?"

"No, he's okay on that score, I think."

She sighed into the phone and he realized that she must have been scared herself. "That's not so bad, then. Is Scott where I can talk to him?"

"I'm out in the hall. He doesn't know I called you."

"I thought maybe as much," and he could hear the amusement in her voice. "Take the phone back into the room and give it to him. I need to ask him some questions."

"He's going to kill me."

"Not when I get done with him. You did the right thing. He's pushed himself too far."

So EJ took the phone back into their room and sat down on Scott's bed. "Hey man, Jean's on the phone and wants to talk to you."

"What?" Summers muttered, rolling slowly onto his back and reaching out blindly to feel for the phone. EJ put it in his hand. "I didn't hear it ring."

"It didn't. I called her."

"EJ!"

"You're in a bad way, man. I needed some advice."

_Scott,_ came from the cell phone's earpiece and Scott put it to his ear. EJ moved over to his own bed, to give them some privacy. He couldn't hear what Jean asked, but Scott replied only with 'yes,' 'yes,' 'no,' and 'okay.'

Finally, he held out the phone to EJ, who took it back to ask, "So?"

"He'll be fine," Jean replied. "This is a bad one, yes, but he's been through worse and there isn't much to be done beyond what you're doing already. Just let him sleep and give him Imitrex - his pain meds - if he asks for it. And he'd better ask for it. In the morning, he owes you an explanation. I told him that. But call me again if he should start vomiting, become delirious, or complain of a great pressure in his head."

"All right."

"EJ - thank you. He won't say so, but thank you."

So EJ bullied Scott into taking some pain medication, then went next door again to let him sleep, hoping Elizabeth and Phoebe were past their Kick-Butt-Women-on-TV debate. They were, but he still got little studying done and retired early at ten o'clock. The next morning, Summers was up but wobbly on his feet, so EJ insisted that he stay home from class. When EJ returned sometime after two, he found Summers sitting at his desk under the window, showered, dressed, and wasting time surfing the Net. He turned at EJ's entrance. "Hey."

"Hey! How you feeling?"

"All right, I guess. A little stupid."

"Why? It wasn't your fault."

But Summers just looked off at the far wall, no expression on his face. Light from the window behind cut his profile clean and sharp. Then he stood. "We need to talk, Eeej." Head tilted, he eyed his friend. "You asked me yesterday to trust you. Okay, I'm going to."

"Why does this sound like something I may not like?"

Summers shrugged. "I don't know what you'll think. But after yesterday, you deserve to know the whole truth. Let's go somewhere else, though. Some of this, you need to see - and I don't dare show you here."

EJ's unease was metamorphosing into a low-grade alarm. "What's so bad you can't show me here?"

"It's not bad. It's just . . . . I can't show you here. Let's go up to that little woody area near the Big C. Come on." And he slipped past EJ, out into the hall, then paused to glance back. EJ still stood in their dorm room, his backpack over his shoulder. "Look - I'm not going to take you up there and murder you or anything." He grinned, but it was strained and the joke fell flat. "Let's go," he finished, and EJ tossed the backpack onto his bed and followed him out.

They rode bikes; EJ still had his even though he'd brought back a car after Christmas. No one drove on campus. Only mid-afternoon on a Thursday, students were still thick on the sidewalks, so they had to weave their way carefully, which suited Scott. He wasn't yet up to great physical exertion. The spring temperatures were mild and trees were blooming under a clear-quartz sky, early flowers bright in mulched beds and crowded into artfully placed cement planters. The ride might have been pleasant had his stomach been churning less. They reached the rise that led up to the Big C overlooking the Bay, but he turned off the path before they were even halfway there, heading into the surrounding trees on foot, pushing his bike. EJ followed, and Scott kept an eye out to be sure that no one else did, accidentally or not.

Some way inside, there was a little clearing that Scott had found the previous August. A fallen pine had taken down two others, creating an odd triangle of rotten wood draped in vines and white lichen. There, they leaned their bikes against trees and faced each other - edgy, unsure, suspicious - until abruptly, Scott started laughing. "Christ, this seems so pretentious!" Baffled, EJ said nothing, just watched as his friend sat down on a fallen log. "Sit, Eeej. You look like you think I have a brain tumor or something."

In fact, that very fear had flitted through EJ's head earlier, but he couldn't imagine why Summers wouldn't have been able to tell him that in the dorm, or what Summers had to show him that necessitated being outdoors. "Okay," he replied cautiously, and came to sit on another log, a few feet away. Summers noticed the distance but didn't comment.

And now that the moment was upon him, Scott had absolutely no idea where to start. He'd spent most of the day thinking it through and rehearsing, but - perhaps predictably - everything had scattered out of his head when the time had arrived. So he went with the short and simple. "I'm a mutant."

EJ didn't immediately answer, then said only, "Huh?"

And Scott Summers blinked. He'd anticipated any of a good half-dozen replies, even prepared for them, but none had included 'Huh?' Perspective thus duly returned, he laughed at himself. However much the events in Winnipeg had preyed on his own mind for the week since spring break, EJ had probably forgotten all about it. "I'm a mutant," he repeated. "You remember that guy from the news when we were down at your house? The guy up in Winnipeg who was - "

" - turning over cars?" EJ's bafflement had transformed into shock, but not into alarm. "But you don't . . . you're not . . .." EJ stopped and stared. "You don't look like that guy did."

"No. Each mutation is unique. I have no idea who that guy was, or even what his mutation is, other than excessive strength. I don't get my jollies flipping SUVs, though. I usually try to _avoid_ hurting people. My own mutation . . . " He tapped his glasses. "It's here, in my eyes."

"What do they look like?"

"Huh?" His turn now for monosyllabic brilliance.

"Your eyes - what do they look like?" EJ leaned in a little. "I figured there had to be something seriously wrong with them, since you won't ever let anyone see them."

"Actually, they don't look any different at all - as long as they're closed." He glanced up, to be sure no branches obscured the sky directly overhead, then shut his eyes and pulled his glasses off. "See? It's when they're open that we have a problem. That's why I have to wear the glasses, and why I had to bring you out here. I could try to explain it to you, but it's probably easier just to show you."

Tilting his chin up, he opened his eyes and felt the energy coil, then explode skyward in a bright neon wash of red.

One second, two, three.

Shutting his eyes once more, he lowered his chin to put the glasses back on. There was silence, not even the call of birds. And no sound from EJ at all.

Safe behind ruby quartz, Scott opened his eyes to find his friend on his feet and half way across the clearing. But he wasn't running. Instead, he wore a stupefied expression. "Holy _shit! You're_ the Berkeley UFO?"


	8. Fallout

"Whoa. Back up. _How _much force?"

"At full power, about ten kilotons of TNT. I could pretty much level a city block. Maybe a couple of city blocks, if I left my eyes open long enough."

"Holy shit." But it was said almost perfunctorily, and EJ wasn't watching him. He was staring out over the dark bay water where the wind made little white caps and passing motorboats stirred up wakes. They'd left the clearing some time ago and now sat on the hill above the Big C, overlooking the Berkeley campus on one side and the San Francisco Bay on the other. After Scott's demonstration, EJ had wisely suggested that they move elsewhere, in case anyone came looking for the source of the red light. So they'd pushed their bikes all the way to the top and sat down to talk, a little off the beaten track. The Big C was a bright splash below, a letter of poured concrete branded flat onto the hillside and painted yellow. To the west, the Golden Gate Bridge was just visible in the hazy distance, its outline indistinct and gray. Scott had told EJ everything he knew about his own mutation, and a little about the professor's school. Through it all, EJ had remained remarkably - almost inhumanly - calm, listening, asking questions, absorbing.

"The beams don't normally strike with that much force," Scott explained now. "I actually have to _push_ harder with them. I don't know how I do that; I mean, how do you piss harder? Your body just learns to do it. It's kinda the same with this."

"So you _can_ control it?"

"To a limited degree. I just can't shut it off. The professor thinks I'll get better at controlling it as time goes on, maybe even learn to stop the beams entirely. They're still not sure why I _can't_, and my brain is so different now, Hank can't tell much from MRIs or CAT-scans, and X-Rays just come up blank from all the energy in my head. But who've they got to compare me to? Most mutations are pretty new at this point."

"I thought you said they been around a while. Your professor is, what, in his 60s?"

"Yeah, but there were very, very few mutants back then. He might've been one of the first. But if Jean's calculations are right, it's hitting some kind of critical mass - exponentially more mutants born in each generation." Scott frowned down at the dirt between his knees. "Our existence isn't really a secret, but it's been specialized knowledge within the medical community. Now though . . . you saw that news report on TV down at your parents' house. If enough things like that happen, and people find out about us because of weirdoes turning over cars on highways, people will wind up scared of us."

"And that's why you didn't tell me?"

"Yeah. Kinda. I didn't know what you'd think. At least you're not going postal on me."

For a while, EJ didn't respond, then he said only, "I've got some mixed feelings."

Scott's stomach twisted. "So you are scared?"

"No, not scared. That's the least of it. You don't scare me, Slim." He fell silent again. He'd picked a few blades of grass and now shredded them in his fingers. It kept his hands busy.

"So what is it?"

EJ shook his head. "For six months you been giving me this crap about being 'light sensitive.'" He threw away the bits of grass. A breeze blew them back in his face. He was frowning. "And yeah, I do kinda see where you're coming from but . . . I wish you'd told me from the beginning."

"How was I supposed to know you weren't going to freak out and run off to the administration building, saying, 'My roomie's a mutant! Get me a new roomie!'"

"So what if I had, man? Would you've wanted to room with someone who didn't want you? How was I to know, when I first saw you, that you weren't going to run to admin and say, 'Whoa, my roomie's a nigger! Get me a new roomie!'"

"Like they'd have listened to that anyway, even if it had mattered?"

"Well, no, but you think I want to live with someone who wouldn't want to live with me because of my skin color? No way. I'd rather know upfront if it's going to be an issue. And so what if I _had_ run to admin to say you were a mutant? Why you trying to hide it? I thought you said mutants weren't no secret."

"We're not, exactly, but I might not have been allowed to stay enrolled if they knew."

"Man, this is _Berkeley_! Did you fucking forget that? They'd probably invent a new minority scholarship for you, so they could claim you! But I still don't buy that as a good reason. Lot of black men couldn't even get into colleges because they was black. They had to fight for the right to an education. I wouldn't _be_ here if they hadn't fought, and I'm not going to spit in their eye by pretending to be something I'm not. I'm black. I'm proud of that. Some of us can't pass, and I don't have a lot of sympathy for those who try. _If_ the administration were to kick you out - _ big_, damn if - why not stand up and _fight_, man? They'd have no reason to expel you just because you're a mutant. You meet the entrance requirements, you got an academic scholarship, you got the drive to make it - so you got weird DNA, too. So the fuck what? Who cares?"

"But you heard how the newscaster talked about mutants. And your own family, too!"

"Well, yeah! Because that was all we knew! You just said yourself you was afraid people'd fear you because of guys like the one up in Winnipeg. But of course they will unless they know better. What if we'd known _you_ were a mutant yourself? We'd have seen the whole thing differently. You gotta _tell_ people, man. They gotta get to know you, so they know what mutants are like."

Abruptly, he rose up to dust grass off his legs and behind. His expression was still hard, but determined, as if he'd finally reached some internal conclusion. "No, I'm not scared of you, man. I'm mad at you. I'm pissed as hell. I called you my friend, but you lied to me. Come talk to me again when you feel like being real with the rest of us." And he walked away to get his bike from where he'd left it leaning against a pine tree.

Angry now in his own turn, Scott stood up to shout, "_I am_ trying to be real with you!"

EJ just raised a hand and made a dismissive gesture as he got on his bike - but he glanced back before he rode off. "With me? Okay, yeah, after six months, you're finally leveling with me. How about with everyone else? Get out of the damn closet, Summers."

After EJ left, Scott sat and brooded for a long while. Late afternoon light fell warm on his shoulders and hair, and slanted shadows with fuzzy edges over the clearing, like his moral quandaries. Had he been wrong, he wondered? Or was EJ being unreasonable? Or, just maybe, they were both wrong and both right. Pulling out his cell phone, he started to place a call - almost on instinct - but stopped and laid the phone on the ground between his knees to stare at it. Overhead, a crow made a caw-caw-caw sound, like laughter, and he finally picked up the phone again to dial the number of the person he most needed advice from, and not Jean.

When the man on the other end answered, he said, "Professor? Do you have a few minutes?" Xavier said that he did and Scott told him everything, ending with, "What should I do?"

"It seems to me that you need to tell him the whole truth."

For three beats, Scott didn't reply, because he didn't understand. "But I did tell him the truth," he said finally. "Well, most of it. I didn't tell him about Cerebro, or Hank's new toy, but I didn't think you'd want me to."

"Scott, you are missing my point. And you did not tell him the truth. You gave him an excuse. This isn't about why you did not tell him at first, I think. EJ might have preferred that you had, though I believe he understands why you did not - "

"But he gave me all that shit about minorities and not being able to pass!"

"Mmmm. But was that why he was angry with you? It seems to me that EJ was trying to sort out his own feelings. We may know what we feel, Scott, but not always why we feel it. In the end, what reason did he give you for being angry?"

Scott thought about it, then frowned and poked holes in the sandy California dirt with his forefinger. Shame ate at him. "Because I lied to him for so long."

"Yes. He thought you were his friend, yet you kept this from him for months until he doubts now that you feel as close to him as he had believed - as close as he feels to you. And people rarely like to be vulnerable that way, do we? That very vulnerability is what kept you from telling him the full truth: that the reason you had difficulty trusting him in the first place was because you feared to lose his friendship."

Scott laughed and rubbed at his eyes under his glasses. "You're not even here where you can read my mind. How do you know all these things anyway, professor?"

"I don't always need telepathy to tell me what people are thinking, or feeling," Xavier replied, and Scott could hear the humor in his voice. "Sometimes simple common sense and a little life experience serve just as well. Besides, I know you. I am certain that you were very academic in your explanations. You gave him all the information he could possibly want, and then some - but did you give him your fears and insecurities?"

Scott lay back on the ground and stared up at the sky through the tree branches. "I really hate it when you do that to me."

"Do what?"

"Tell me what I did wrong, and you're right."

The professor's soft laugh came out of the phone. "Scott, your friend has shared his anger with you, and the reason for it. But you shared with him only your generic fears. Why not meet his courage halfway and be fully honest? You weren't afraid that he might go to the administration - you feared that he wouldn't like you anymore if he knew the truth. And you wanted him to like you. But EJ had a point, you know. How could he be the friend you wanted him to be if he didn't know the full truth about you?"

Scott sighed. "Yeah." Then, "Thank you, sir."

"Of course, Scott. You may call me any time, you know."

Closing the receiver, Scott lay on his back for a while, arms above his head, phone in one. The sun fell on his body, dappling him in late afternoon light. He could feel where it kissed his skin and where it left him wanting. Fickle lover. The air smelled of pinesap and salt air, and some crawling insect tickled his empty palm as it crossed. He didn't twitch.

Despite his conversation with the professor, he wasn't ready yet to return to the dorm. He needed to ponder how to approach this second discussion with EJ. Then he laughed aloud at that. _Think, think, think. _He always had to_ think_. He used how much he knew as a shield against how much he felt. His father had taught him that, had taught him to keep his feelings to himself. It was easier to live amputated at the neck than to risk the dizzying vertigo of looking down into that well of his private terrors and needs and jealousies. He was tender inside because he'd never learned how to take an emotional sucker-punch, so he protected his feelings like a boy learned to protect his crotch.

EJ didn't have that particular problem, and it had drawn Scott to EJ from the start. Feelings didn't scare EJ Haight, and Scott Summers wanted to learn that kind of fearlessness.

_Get off your back, Summers, and do something on instinct for once_, he told himself, pushing up to his feet and brushing crisp, dry leaves and pine needles out of his hair. They fell to the ground like the binding ropes of his inhibitions. Mounting his bike, he guided it back down the narrow pathway and returned to his dorm. It was too much to hope that EJ would be unoccupied in their room. Instead, he was down the hall, visiting the only other black student on their floor. Idly, Scott wondered if that were mere chance or if EJ had sought out some sort of racial reassurance.

Their voices drifted out into the hallway through the open door, EJ's raised to make some point. One could usually find Elijah Jerome by following the lilting-emphatic timbre of his conversation. Now, Scott stopped just beyond the doorway and took a breath, making himself acknowledge the pounding of his heart. He'd been less nervous asking out pretty girls, but never had so much lay on the line. Here, he risked rejection by a man whose good opinion mattered to him. It was the same fear that had kept him silent for so long, and that hadn't proven to be a wise choice.

So he knocked.

Both boys looked up, and in EJ's face, Scott read a rapid succession from surprise to wariness to something that looked as if it might be hope. "Hey," Scott said, forcing the sound from his throat with a tearing like birth. Something new entered into the space between them. "You, um . . . Can I see you for a minute?"

EJ glanced at Dominic. "See you 'round." And he pushed himself up out of the chair, following Scott into the hall, but no further. "What?" The wariness was back and his arms were crossed.

"I can't talk here."

"Why? Still trying to hide, Slim?"

The question brought an abrupt stop to his thoughts, like a slap - guilt and shame and anger burning in the back of his throat - and how did he reply? Honesty, honesty. It wasn't exposure of his mutancy that he feared. "Maybe," he said very softly, "I just don't feel like parading my feelings in front of all our dorm mates."

Like a tripped switch, EJ's whole demeanor softened and his arms uncrossed, though Scott didn't realize that the change owed as much to the plain pain on his face as to the words he'd said. That pain had cut the Gordian knot of anger that had coiled in EJ's gut, a knot that all of Scott's elaborate explanations and rationales had failed to loose. "Okay," EJ said. "Fair enough."

So they returned to the room they'd shared for over half a year, both of them stiff and anxious with the risk of taking a chance on the other, and sat down cross-legged on their beds. The necessity of looking for EJ had drained some of Scott's resolve, and EJ himself felt too resentful still to help. So they sat silent. Outside, the sun was setting, and with their window facing north and no lights on in the room, it was dim and close, furniture ill-revealed and sinking into shadows near the floor. Normally, suspense would have made EJ speak; he'd never been one to sit still or stay quiet for long. Now, though, it was Scott who was driven to speak first.

"I didn't tell you earlier because I was afraid you wouldn't want to be my friend, if you knew what I was." Shifting slightly in a soft chaff of sheets, he went on, "I won't apologize for not telling you the first day. Or even the first month. Maybe that makes me a coward, but I didn't know you, and I've learned to hedge my bets. When the power first came on me, only a few people were willing to talk to me after. To most, I was just a freak show, and they'd known me for years. I haven't been back to San Diego since I left with the professor, and if I _never_ go back, it'll be too soon."

"You didn't tell me that, earlier," EJ said.

Scott merely shrugged by way of answer. "I should have told you about the blasts after I got to know you. But it would've been easier if I hadn't liked you so well. I wanted you to keep liking me, too."

"What made you think I wouldn't?" EJ asked, his voice dough soft with disillusionment. Scott just shrugged again, and EJ pressed, "I'd like to think I didn't give you a reason to believe I'd be prejudiced, Slim."

"Not prejudiced on the basis of race, or gender - no. But genetics? You're a preacher's son. I didn't know if you'd see me as some kind of freak, too, like the others did, or an abomination in the eyes of God."

"I don't _judge_ people like that, man! I thought you knew that by now. How many conversations we had, in _this very room_, about tolerance? Even if I don't agree with something, it ain't _right_ to persecute people. Ain't no way Jesus of Nazareth ever taught that!"

Scott looked out the window, which glowed faintly in the room's dark, like an invitation to escape. "But when it's your own ass on the line, it's not just philosophical anymore. I didn't want to be tolerated, Eeej. I wanted you to like me."

"Ah shit." Abruptly EJ rose up from the bed and paced across to the door and back, stopping in front of Scott. "Look, Summers, you're my friend. I care about you, man. That's not tolerance. I _tolerate_ the way you eat, which is so unhealthy it's fucking crazy. I _tolerate_ the fact that you leave your clothes all over your half of the goddamn room. But I don't tolerate _you_. I like you. You're the best friend I've had in a long time, maybe the best friend I've ever had. That's why I got so damn pissed. I took you home to my _family_, but you was hiding all this?"

"I was afraid - "

"I know you was afraid! But even if I'd had some religious objection to your mutancy - which I don't - it wouldn't change the fact that I like you, and that's a lot bigger than any of the differences between us, y'know?"

Scott just nodded, because he couldn't get sound out. Finally, he managed, "You're the only person I've ever told about this" - he tapped his glasses - "who I didn't have to, or who wasn't a mutant. You're the first person I trusted that much. It may not seem like it, considering how long I took to tell you, but you're the only one I've ever trusted that much."

"Come here," EJ answered, pulling him up off the bed to hug him. It was awkward for Scott, who found such displays of affection difficult under most circumstances and all the more so between men, but EJ didn't let him go. "God, you're like a freakin' store mannequin, Summers. Learn to take a hug, man. It don't mean I'm coming onto you. Your boobs ain't big enough."

And that made Scott laugh until he finally relaxed, accepting the embrace. "It wasn't that," he said, squeezing EJ tightly once before letting him go. "It's just . . . hard for me."

"I know. Sometimes I think you're the tin man, Slim. You and Lee-Lee got a thing or two in common on that score, but you gotta open up more. You might be surprised. People like you, or they want to . . . but they ain't always sure if you like them. Give 'em a chance."

Summers snorted. "What? You think I should tell everybody?"

"Maybe not everybody. But yeah - you oughta tell more than just me."

"Right. So I can get called a freak here, too?"

EJ shook his head. "This ain't San Diego, man. People are gonna find you more interesting than scary. Phoebe's spent this entire goddamn semester trying to figure out the Berkeley UFO. Imagine her face when she finds out she been living right next door to it!"

"She'll probably run screaming for the hills."

"That ain't true and you know it." EJ rested both his hands on Scott's shoulders. "Trust me on this, Slim. Trust me, to trust them."

Scott tilted his head slightly, but then nodded. "Okay. But if it backfires - "

"I'll stand by you. I told you - you're my friend. Anybody call you a freak, they gotta answer to _me_, too. We clear on that?"

"We're clear."

"Then do the right thing."

Scott just nodded.

* * *

><p>Jean Grey was running late, and if Dr. Bruce Banner were fairly even-tempered as far as doctors and researchers went, he did have a few quirks, punctuality being among them. Racing along the hall of the biology building, her glasses slipped down her sweaty nose and went clattering onto the tile floor, requiring her to stop and pick them up, and slowing her even further. The edge of one lens had cracked, too. "Dammit!" she snarled, shoving them into the pocket of her white lab coat.<p>

By the time she reached Banner's lab, skittering through the open door and sliding to a stop like a character in a children's cartoon, she was eleven minutes late. Everyone in the room stopped to look up at her. Three pairs of eyes where she'd expected only two. The third belonged to a young man who, if his age were anything to go on, probably numbered among the med students the same as she did.

"Glad to have you join us, Miss Grey," Banner said, pushing his own glasses up his nose. He had an apple-round face and terminally straight hair - not a handsome man, but pleasant in expression when he wasn't perturbed by something, either recalcitrant experiments or late protégées.

"There was, ah, traffic." She glanced at Hank, but he wasn't looking at her. No rescue from that quarter. They'd both driven into the city from the same place, after all.

"There is always traffic in New York, Miss Grey. And if doctors generally have a reputation for keeping golfing hours, I don't."

"Yes, sir. I know, sir."

Banner nodded towards the newcomer. "Why don't you help Mr. Roberts with the slides. Ted Roberts, meet Jean Grey. She's about a year ahead of you, in terms of her research. She's also a mutant, like Henry."

And that made Jean start in shock, that Bruce would so casually announce it, but the other boy - man, really - didn't seem put off in the least. He grinned at her and held out a hand to shake. "Glad to meet you, Miss Grey." He had an accent - some flavor of Southern that Jean couldn't yet place.

"Ah - Jean. Please."

"Then call me Ted."

She smiled, and blushed, and nodded, because she'd gotten a good look at his eyes, as black as Frank's but full of humor instead of sorrow. Beyond that, he wasn't particularly handsome. He had big ears that protruded slightly to create a Dumbo effect, and freckles across his nose. But his smile was easy, and his eyes were beautiful, and he had a surgeon's hands, long and clever with tapered fingers. She was a bit slow to let that hand go and smiled back at him, dazzling him completely.

"Do either of you," Banner asked, making them both whip their heads around, "plan to finish those slides any time today?"

"Oh. Yeah." And Ted showed Jean the samples he'd been working with. Buccal swabs - cheek cell samples - all carefully numbered. "These are the mutant samples here, and these are the controls."

"Gotcha." And they set to work doing the DNA preps. They might have used the genetics lab robot, but the number of samples wasn't quite large enough to justify it, and Banner believed in a hands-on approach. He still took research notes in a hard-bound notebook, eschewing PDAs and laptops. Last spring, when there had been an afternoon-long blackout, he'd proudly walked about, patting his breast-pocket with pens and a calculator, and saying, "I have my computer right here." It was another of his quirks. Banner might not have as many articles in refereed journals as some of his department colleagues, but his were widely cited, and his reputation in the field colossal, so his quirks were absorbed and tolerated. He'd once told Jean, just a few weeks after she'd begun working with him, "Measure three times and cut once, m'dear. My grandfather was a carpenter and he taught me that. Do it right the first time, so you don't have to redo it. Carpentry - and science - is all about precision and care and noticing the small things."

So Jean and Ted lysed cells with detergent, then set them to spin in a centrifuge and removed the clear supernatant that was forced to the top. They conversed quietly as they worked, in counterpoint to the metal-music clink of instruments.

"The Banner-Man's a bit edgy this morning, you think?"

Jean smiled. "It's still before ten, and he hasn't had five cups of coffee yet. How long have you known Dr. Banner anyway?"

"I took a couple classes with him, and when I applied to the genetics program, he agreed to direct my thesis."

"You're interested in mutations?"

"Yep."

"Why? If you don't mind my asking - "

" - since I'm not a mutant? Our _interests_ aren't genetic, Jean." He grinned, brief and wicked. "That's just what we study."

"I'm sorry; I didn't mean to sound aggressive."

He sighed. "No, my fault. I keep hearing the same question over and over, so I'm a tad defensive. Dad's got a practice down in Chattanooga and he still can't figure why I might want to go the research route instead of coming home to join him in the office."

"So why don't you?"

"I want to do something that makes a difference. I was interested in looking at the effects of genetics on the HIV virus, how much it contributed to the likelihood of developing AIDS or ARC." That wicked grin again. "I had delusions of winning the Nobel Prize, y'know."

She laughed. "I think it's been done, Ted. The research, I mean."

"Yeah, so I found out. When I took Dr. Banner's class on evolutionary biology, I was just . . . fascinated. Think of the potential for genetic engineering . . . " And off he went on the subject in that charming, lilting accent that she could now place as Tennessee - like North Carolina on speed. She could listen to him talk for hours, and more or less did as they saturated the DNA samples with ethanol and spun them again, removed the clear supernatant a second time to wash the sample pellets, then spun them further, finally drying and suspending them in Tris-EDTA for Banner and McCoy to dilute and sequence. Tedious, but necessary. Jean had become quick and proficient in the past year with Banner, and Ted watched her with respect while she watched him from beneath lowered lids, head tilted just so. When they went for a coffee break, Ted asked her if she'd like to go out and grab a bite after they were done for the day, and Jean agreed. Neither noticed Banner watching them with amused approval and Henry McCoy with stiff-faced inscrutability that concealed a dim jealousy he wasn't entirely prepared to admit to. He'd never expected to win Jean for himself. What would the graceful Jean Grey see in a big, hulking ape of a man? But there she sat, head bent close to a jughead from the Appalachians, laughing at all his jokes. Hank had tolerated Scott Summers' crush because Summers was a kid, and as for Warren . . . . Well, Warren wasn't much older than Scott, and Hank had yet to decide if his flirting with Jean were serious or reflexive. So while Hank hadn't had much hope of claiming Jean, neither had the other two. But this non-mutant Southern gentleman was another story entirely, and if Hank had never thought of himself as unkind or envious, he was envious now.

Banner, who sat beside him at the little round table in the building café, nudged his foot. "What is it, Henry?"

"How well do you know Mr. Roberts?"

Leaning over the tabletop, hands folded in front of his face, Banner studied his former student and current colleague. Although Hank was easily the most brilliant young man that Banner had ever had the pleasure to work with, in some ways, he could be a tad dim. "Ted's a good kid. Smart as a whip, but a bit lazy. We'll train him out of that. I have high hopes for him." Henry was still watching Jean and Ted Roberts chat. "If you're going to make a move, Hank, it's now or never. She can't read your mind."

And Henry McCoy nearly choked on his Coke. "What makes you think I have any interest in Jean? She's five years younger than me!"

"And so . . . ?"

Blushing furiously, Henry set the bright red can down on the table. "She's not interested in me, Bruce. She never was, she never will be. I'm like a big brother to her. And . . . that's okay."

Banner shook his head faintly, but he'd had a long-standing policy of not getting overly involved in his students' - or his ex-students' - lives. "Your choice."

"My choice. And I made it a while ago. I just don't want to see anyone mistreat Jean. She . . . had a hard time, down at Vandy, with men."

"Hmmph," was all Banner replied. After a minute of watching the two young med students, he added, "I'm more worried for Ted than for Jean." He grinned. "She has him wrapped around her little finger in less than three hours."

* * *

><p>Scott chose to make his revelatory trial run to his fellow band members. Rick accepted the news with the same nonchalance that he applied to most everything, but Lee had more questions. As with EJ, she wanted to know why Scott had kept it a secret for so long. She, however, was more inclined to accept his caution. Being cynical herself by nature, and private, she agreed with him that discretion was sometimes the better part of valor. Not everyone could be as forthright as EJ, but EJ was still young enough that he couldn't understand why such might be so. Seeing in shades of gray was a privilege of age. In this case, too - as Charles Xavier had surmised even without telepathic assistance - EJ's peevishness stemmed as much from wounded affection and pride as from any ideological disagreement. He might have forgiven Scott in word, but matters were still cool between them in the weeks that followed. Forgiveness was not acquittal, and telling the truth to others was a part of Scott's penance. Revelations to fellow band members were just the start. From there, Scott moved on to a handful of dorm mates.<p>

"Whoa! You can do _what_?" was Phoebe's reaction to the news.

So Scott demonstrated again. At EJ's suggestion, he'd selected a less dramatic manner to reveal his gift to others. After the UFO rumor, he'd found that not only could he cut up fallen branches to release excess energy, but he could use the beams to carve wood, as well. So now, he adjusted the aperture on his visor to release a knife-thin beam of energy, cutting into the block of maple that he'd brought. It was his own unique method of whittling wood.

Both Phoebe and Elizabeth watched, their mouths agape in comical Os of astonishment.

"That is _so cool_!" Phoebe squealed as soon as he'd closed the visor cover, but Elizabeth was silent. "What else can you do? I mean, can you, like, start a fire with them?"

"They're not heat, Phoeb, just force. Friction from the beams could make something hot, but the beams themselves aren't hot."

"So you don't burn holes in things."

"No, just _knock_ holes in things."

"This is so cool!" she said again, hugging herself and dancing about the music room where'd they'd asked the two girls to come so that Scott could do his thing. The walls were more insulated here than in the dorm. "Scott Summers is the Berkeley UFO!"

Elizabeth, however, was far less sure. "You could hurt somebody, couldn't you?"

"I could," Scott replied. "Usually, I try to avoid it; blood is so hard to wash out of the carpet, y'know." Yet making light of it didn't lighten her mood and her eyes remained wide while she glanced towards the door. "Liz," he said again, "I'm not dangerous." Not strictly true, but true in essentials. "I'm not going to hurt you, or Phoebe, or EJ, or anybody else. I'd rather hurt myself."

She was not, he thought, entirely convinced, but her muscles did relax, and by the time she and Phoebe left, he didn't fear that she would rush right to the administration - or worse, the police - to report him as a danger to the public. A small victory, perhaps, but a victory, and he waited for his weekly chat with Jean, to tell her the news. But Jean never called.

* * *

><p>"<em>You<em> took cocaine?"

"Yes." Jean stared up at the sky through the still-bare branches of a big maple on the mansion property. "You've never taken coke, have you?"

"No," Ted replied, his voice edged about with echoes of both righteousness and curiosity.

"It makes you feel as if you can do anything. I know that's such a cliché, but it's true. You're just . . . on top of the world. No fears. No insecurities. You have no idea how much I needed that, Ted. I was a mess - afraid of everything. But the first time I snorted coke at a party, all that changed. I was funny and outgoing and the boys asked me to dance."

Ted Roberts listened to her explanation, caught somewhere between confusion and awe - awed that she'd trust him enough to tell him this, but confused as to why anyone as beautiful and classy and intelligent as Jean Grey would be afraid of anything, least of all boys. Truth was, she terrified _him_, and sometimes he felt an irrational need to pinch himself, to remind himself this was real. They might share the same interests and career, and even similar backgrounds as children of the privileged upper crust in their respective hometowns, but beyond that, she was Aphrodite and he Hephaestus, limping and ugly and chained to the forge of his research. Or he had been. Now, they found time to rent a movie, or go to dinner, or ride the horses at the mansion where he'd been made welcome by Xavier and reluctantly tolerated by Hank McCoy.

"I would have asked you to dance, shy or not," Ted told her now.

Sitting up on the bench under the maple tree so that her shoulder-length hair swept back from her face like an auburn veil, she smiled at him. "In other words, I left Vandy too soon?"

"I guess you could say that."

Another thing they both shared was having attended Vanderbilt University in Nashville, she for a single semester of her freshman year while he had earned his undergraduate degree there. He had fond memories of the place, but hers were mostly a spiral down into spectacular self-destruction.

"Unfortunately," she said now, "I didn't have a choice about leaving." But she wasn't looking at him. She was looking towards the long reflecting pond in the mansion yard, watching a mother mallard approach, followed by a line of fuzzy yellow and brown ducklings. They waddled in the spiky shadows of new daffodil leaves, and she tossed the last bit of her bagel towards them, but too skittish, they all fled into the water.

"What happened?"

"I screwed up so much my first semester, I wound up on academic probation. Me, the high school valedictorian. Needless to say, my parents were outraged. Christmas break that year was pure hell, I practically fled back to Nashville. Early in my second semester, though, I had the classic O.D. experience. I was lucky; cocaine can be lethal. My friends rushed me to ER over my own protests, and my parents were called in from New York. They withdrew me from school and took me home for drug rehab." She smiled again, but it was as bitter as stale tea. "I hated it. I went to Nashville in the first place to get as far away from my mother as I could manage."

And Ted had thought he had issues with his parents. "She that bad?"

"With bells on."

* * *

><p>A bloodcurdling scream catapulted Ororo out of deep sleep, making her screech in response and flop over in the bed - still half-asleep - to clutch at Frank where he was sitting upright, shaking and breathing heavily. But it wasn't the first time he'd woken this way, and her responses were automatic now: hold him close and stroke his hair until he had his breath back, then see if he wanted to talk about it. Slowly, his arms slipped around her and he let himself be held. This was part of why she loved him so. He was strong enough to let himself be weak. "Francesco," she whispered in French, voice rough with the tears that were always at the back of her throat these days, "when is this going to stop?"<p>

"I don't know," he replied in the same language.

"The Vision?"

"Yes."

Silence. The space heater hummed in the background. Although mid-spring, nights could grow quite chill in New York, and it was easier to heat a room than the entire house. If Xavier had little concern for money, he did eschew unnecessary waste. The mansion put out a recycling bin every trash day, as well. They were responsible citizens, quiet neighbors . . . why, Ororo wondered, would the government seek to hunt them down as Frank's vision warned? It seemed too enormous to be real. "Maybe it's just a bad dream," she said.

"No. They're going to come and take us away, put us in prisons and mark us, then kill us if they can. Our own holocaust. It will happen unless we find some way to stop it."

"It's America, Francesco."

"It makes no difference. They are quick to pursue freedom on others' land, but if 'national security' is threatened, they will react like any other people. Fear conquers reason. They will see us as a threat, and label us inhuman. We will have no rights, no recourse. They will kill those of us who are strong, and sterilize the others. I have seen it." In fact, he had seen faceless men in riot gear kill her as she fought them with all she had, lightning and gale-force winds and bullets of hail, but he would not tell her that. There was, he firmly believed, such a thing as too much truth, and he didn't believe in fate, not in any usual sense. Riding time as he did, he understood that nothing was simple. Men and women made choices that produced their own fates, but sometimes their natures determined the choices they made, natures shaped by previous choices. To Frank, fate was merely the sum of a life, combined with random chance. New choices could change it.

He clung to that belief because anything else killed hope.

And she clung to him still, continuing to rub his back. "What does the professor think?"

"That the vision is too big this time. Too many possibilities, and the terrible ones press hardest until it seems as if there is no escape; but at this distance from matters, there are always choices. The professor has an idea that may permit me to see more futures than are available to me in dreams. I just need help to control it."

"What's his idea?"

"He's going to put me in Cerebro."

"Absolutely not!" Letting him go, she pushed herself up to her knees, even as her eyes went white in the room's darkness. "Cerebro was made for the professor! Not for you!"

"They're going to modify it. The professor is calling in someone to help. Hank has been taking EEG readings on me, and they're going to modify Cerebro so that I can use it."

"That's insane. He's almost sixty. You're not even eighteen! You don't have his experience!"

"I'm not going to argue with you, Ro. He knows more about it than you do. If he thinks this will work, I'll trust him." Frank looked up at her. "He kept me from going insane before. I need him to keep me from going insane again. I can't maintain this. I'm too exhausted, and when I'm exhausted, it just gets worse. Catch-22."

Sighing, she slumped on the bed sheets. "But even he admits he doesn't fully understand what you do."

"We understand enough. The problem is that I'm too bound to my body. I need Cerebro to free me, so I can see further. So I can see an _answer_."

His gift was psionic and predictive, but Xavier suspected it to be more than simple precognition. Francesco Placido wasn't bound by the same dimensional constraints as others. His body lived in one dimension, but his mind existed outside them. Thus, he saw the future and past as a series of reflecting mirrors extending into infinity. "It's like a fun house," he'd said once. "Many mirrors of what might be, and you can't always find the path through - or really, there are many paths. Any of the mirrors could be real, but some are closer to you and some are further away. They move, too - becoming more or less likely - depending on the choices made. I can't control the choices unless they're mine, but sometimes I can see what a particular choice will lead to."

He rarely shared that information, though. "I'm not a god," he'd said. "I see some things, but not everything, and sometimes I must guess at what I think the pivotal choice was. I could be wrong." So he kept his visions to himself except for the small and mostly insignificant, or the far-reaching and important. He had occasionally called the police to report a crime in progress. No doubt, the police had thought him an eyewitness, which he was, in a manner of speaking. But he did this rarely - he did not, after all, see everything - and he was still trying to decide on the most responsible application of his gift. Francesco was an idealist and an ethical man, and that was the other reason Ororo loved him. He had returned to her a belief in basic human goodness. It would have been so very much easier either for him to withdraw entirely, or to exploit his gift for fame, or because he thought he had the answers. But he wasn't arrogant that way, or selfish. So he pursued the toughest road of all: a middle one - to tell what needed to be told, but not to interfere in the lives of others, even if he thought he might spare them personal pain.

But this new vision was too enormous, too all-encompassing, and too tragic for him to keep to himself. It had begun the evening of the Winnipeg Marauder's first appearance, and had grown worse since. In the past week, no night had passed in which he'd slept undisturbed, and Ororo was in a position to know. She'd been sharing his bed for months now, and not for sex. They hadn't needed to sleep together to find a quiet moment and privacy. She slept with Francesco because his dormant mind was least anchored to his body, and in sleep he could slip free. After he woke, he needed a body to cling to, to ground him again in his own dimension, his own reality. Frank's mother had never objected to their arrangement, and neither had Xavier - too practical to do so, both for Frank's sake and because Ororo wouldn't have taken kindly to being fettered after surviving on her own for years. Warren had once teasingly referred to her as sixteen going on thirty. It was not far off. Like a feral kitten, Ororo Munroe had never enjoyed the luxury of a childhood.

It was two days later - with no improvement at night - that a stranger arrived at the mansion's entrance. "I'm Dr. Reed Richards," he said when Ororo let him in, a middle-aged man with a pleasant smile and a shocking white streak in his hair. "I'm here to see Charles Xavier?"

And thus began the dismantling and reconstruction of Cerebro. None of the professor's students saw much of either man - or of Frank for that matter - over the next few days, as the three of them locked themselves behind the cold blue-metal doors in the sub-basement.

* * *

><p>Rick Starr, the off-key crooner of Sproul plaza, was at it again, filling the dry California spring air with a butchered version of Frank Sinatra's "My Way." High notes warbled and slipped, went flat and nasal. "Somebody just shoot him and put him out of his misery," Scott muttered under his breath. At times, he lacked both compassion and patience for the follies of others. Did the man not realize how bad he was? Or did he simply crave any attention, even the negative?<p>

Summers was eating lunch in the sun on the steps of lower Sproul, trying (unsuccessfully) to tune out the impromptu concert. It was hot, but heat had never bothered him much, and bothered him not at all since his mutation had manifested. Now, bored and seeking distraction, he pulled out his cell phone to dial Warren. Like his friends back in Westchester, he was concerned about Frank. He was also concerned as to why he'd heard from Jean only three times in two weeks. What email she had sent had been a variation on, "I'm busy, but I'll write a long letter soon."

"Soon" must be relative, and while he knew that she could fall into obsession with her research, he doubted that was the case here, and wondered if he wanted to know the truth, even while half-suspecting it already.

"Hey, man," he said when Warren answered. "How's Frank?"

"Grouchy, but Ro's worse. She's getting no more sleep than he is."

"Any progress?"

"Not really. We're still waiting to see what this Reed guy and the prof have cooked up with Cerebro. They hit some kind of snag and Hank's been doing test after test on Frank. He just lives in the lab these days. Hank gives him sleeping pills, but they don't stop the visions, they just keep him from waking up easily when he has them. I'm not sure which is worse."

"Shit," Summers muttered. Idly, he watched fellow students pass, his eye caught now and then by girl with pretty hair. It was hair that he noticed first. He liked it full and shiny and a bit wavy - red, if he could get it, but dark brown if he couldn't. He'd never much cared for blondes. Jean's hair might be red, but it was thin and lank. "Has Frank said any more about what he's seeing in the visions?"

"The _end_ of the_ world_ . . . !" Warren replied, half in mockery, then sighed. "I shouldn't joke about it. It's freaking him out. It's so far reaching, he can't see enough, and nothing he can see seems to connect to anything else. Just bits and pieces. So he can't figure a way around it."

"And the professor is really going to put him in Cerebro?"

"That's the plan, m'man."

"I don't know if that's brilliant or crazy."

"Ro says crazy."

"Ro would wrap him in felt and chain him to that pedestal she keeps him on in her head, if she could. He's not that fragile. What does Jean think?" The question was out before he could bite it back.

"Ah," Warren stammered. "I don't know. Haven't asked her."

Scott didn't reply to that immediately. In his belly something expanded, making him feel weak though he'd just eaten. The sun was almost preternaturally bright, cutting sharp lines of light and shadow, like truth and lies. No place here for polite vagaries. "She's seeing somebody, isn't she?" he blurted out.

Dead silence on the other end of the phone. Then Warren's voice, unconvincingly bemused. "Who is?"

"Don't play dense, you ass. Jean's got a boyfriend, doesn't she? That's why she's been blowing me off for two weeks."

Silence again. "I'm not sure he's a boyfriend . . . "

Scott snapped the phone shut and wadded up his empty sub wrapper, shoving it down into the paper bag his lunch had come in. It crackled like an accusation. Rising, he tossed it in a trash bin under the shade of a leafy oak, passing out of the sunlight to do so, out of heat into shade. Light and dark; truth and lies. All the way back to Norton Hall, he avoided shadows. A voice in the back of his head sang a tune from childhood, 'Step on a crack and break your mamma's back . . . ' On his floor, he ran into Phoebe, who was hanging about the open door to her room, apparently bored and looking for company. EJ was nowhere in sight, and neither was Elizabeth for that matter. "Hey," he greeted her.

"Hey yourself. You eaten?"

"Yeah, on campus."

"Wanna get a coke and keep me company while I eat then?"

There was something in her expression, eyes lowered, caught between shyness and seduction. She had nice hair, a rich shade of black, and he remembered what EJ had said - that she visited their room so often in order to see him. "Sure," he said. "I could go for a coke or something."

On the way, Phoebe asked him, almost casually, "I don't suppose you're sticking around for the summer, are you?"

In truth, he hadn't planned on it. He'd been counting the weeks until he could get back to New York. Now, he said, "I don't know. Maybe." There were always some classes he could take.

* * *

><p><em>Never wear white dress shoes before Easter. <em>

One of many lessons taught to young, well-bred girls. _Walk straight; keep your knees together when sitting; dark nail polish is for older women;_ and _don't laugh too loudly - it's not ladylike.  
><em>

Ladylike. What Jean Grey had been trained to be. What, to some degree, she hated; but such early lessons ran deep and she would never entirely shake them off.

Now, she sat - knees together, of course - between her mother and elder sister, on the pew bench of Trinity Episcopal Church, Dutchess County, for Easter Sunday service. Growing up, there had always been three Sundays a year when the family of Dr. John Grey, professor of modern European history and chair of the History Department at Bard College, was sure to be at church: Christmas Eve service, Easter Sunday, and Mother's Day. Other services throughout the year might find them in attendance, but these three were sacrosanct, and even now, Jean was expected to drive up from New York for them.

Hymns, homily, the rite and the Eucharist, lots of pageantry and white Easter lilies. Jean sighed. It wasn't that she disliked church, but that she disliked the production into which her mother invariably turned it. Growing up, Jean had been very conscious of the fact that she and Sara were display children. The daughters of Dr. John Grey should be clean, well-dressed, and well-behaved. Sara had behaved better than Jean, who, as the youngest and the apple of her father's eye, had been spoiled. Nature had bestowed on her rich auburn hair and the pale skin of a china doll while Sara's hair was a mousy shade of brown, and Sara - not Jean - had suffered the more severe case of freckles. But Sara had learned her society lessons better, Jean being too inclined to go her own way and - to her mother's great chagrin - could be found outside more often than in. It wasn't sports that drew her (Jean wasn't, precisely, a tomboy), but a fascination with the natural world. She'd caught frogs to sail on sponges in the bathtub, and butterflies to loose in the living room as household decorations. She had even devised a bird catcher made from her mother's upended laundry basket, one side raised on a stick with a string attached and a line of bread leading inside. Then she would hide behind the laundry room door, thirty feet away, string in hand, patiently awaiting a bird to take the bait inside the basket so she could jerk the string and capture a jay, or catbird, or wren, and once, a beautiful male cardinal. At first, her parents and sister had watched, bemused, certain her strategy would never work, but she'd proven them wrong, becoming a proficient bird catcher. Once the bird was trapped, she would take out her little clipboard and record 'facts' about it - the kind a child would notice - her own version of tagging. She could not have said why she was doing such a thing. It had stemmed from some deep-seated need to get closer and understand, and then to organize what she'd learned.

By fifth grade, she'd become more interested in books than dresses, in animals than dolls, and in science than poetry or music. But she had cleaned up nicely, and been quiet and contemplative by nature with a promise of rare beauty in the bone structure of her face. Her mother had enrolled her in the same etiquette classes that Sara had taken, and in modeling and dance, and had hoped that once Jean entered adolescence, she would follow in her sister's footsteps to pursue more traditionally feminine interests. Her father had secretly hoped she would not. She was his smart one, and he made sure to keep her in as many books and child science kits as she asked for. It was their passive rebellion against the tyranny of Elaine Grey.

Everything had changed when Annie had died, but that wasn't a time Jean cared to recall. When her mind traveled back to the spring of her tenth year, it went white and blank - the memories something she could only pick at, like nits, or lint on a dress. In less than five minutes on that Tuesday evening, everything in her life had changed - the touch of Fate, the finger of God, and sometimes it seemed to her as if her life were a series of such moments. Perhaps that was why she struggled so hard to understand what she could. She loved the beauty of paradigms and predictability because too much of her life had involved tripping from one crisis to the next. Only now was she beginning to feel that she had some control.

"Sara, would you please make Joey sit still!" Jean's mother hissed across the space of Jean's lap, pulling her back to the present. Joseph, the younger of Sara's twins, was scooting up and down the pew bench, systematically collecting offering envelopes from all the small racks on the pew backs in front of them, to what end only a small boy would know.

Leaning past her husband, Paul - who was ignoring his son - Sara said something into Joey's ear. He replied with a very loud "No!" and frustrated, Sara blew out and whispered again in a timbre and hiss that reminded Jean exactly of their mother. On Jean's other side, Elaine Grey's lips had thinned. Sara was still talking to Joey, who was still refusing to comply with her words.

"Sara has completely spoiled them," Jean overheard their mother say, supposedly _sotto voce_ but pitched perfectly for Sara to catch. "When you two were that age, you could sit through an entire service."

"Well, you try to make him stop then!" Sara hissed back, frustrated already and now with a struggling three-year-old on her lap.

Leaning over, Elaine gripped the boy's ear and spoke into it. "You sit still or we'll take you right home!"

"I wanna go home!" he replied.

All their neighbors in nearby pews were either looking at them or trying not to. Paul was ignoring the whole affair, as was Jean's father. Sara was within a breath of spanking the boy and Elaine's entire face had gone from white to red. Furious with all of them, Jean snatched up Joey, rose to her feet and pushed past legs to take him outside for the last fifteen minutes of the service. They used rocks to draw on the concrete of the church drive, then Joey chased falling dogwood petals, blown about by the breeze, while Jean sat on the steps and watched. By the time church had let out, he'd lost his little-boy clip tie and his suit jacket - both in Jean's lap - and had grass-stains on both knees of his khakis.

Elaine Grey emerged from the church amidst several of her cronies, a society smile plastered on her face, conversing in her "phone" voice as Jean liked to think of it, modulated and sweet, none of the iron edge she used with her family. Sara stalked across the church lawn to collect Joey while Elaine called Jean up to join her on the sidewalk, then put Jean through the familiar torture of introductions and recitations of her accomplishments at Columbia. When the circus was over and they were headed back to the car, Elaine remarked, "Well, you made absolutely certain that Joey will be worse next time. Taking him out of church was exactly the _wrong_ response. You don't give in to a child's tantrums. He'll only learn that it works!"

"True," Jean agreed, seething inside but playing the rehearsed role of smiling at near-strangers as they passed along the sidewalk to the parking lot. "But you also don't expect a three-year-old to sit through an hour-long service, mother."

"You and Sara could at that age; even Gailyn can manage it!"

"We're all girls! Joey is a boy!"

"It shouldn't make a difference."

"It does. Every child is unique, but there are distinct differences between the genders. Joey is a typical boy, and you just can't - fairly - expect him to sit as quietly as the average girl. Blame biology. I'm the doctor here, remember?"

"You're not a doctor yet," Elaine retorted, mostly because she couldn't think of a better reply. She hated it when her youngest played the trump card of superior education as much as she hated it when her husband did it. It made her feel weak and powerless. Jean normally eschewed such tactics, but occasionally she grew desperate enough to use them.

* * *

><p>If Scott Summers were disinclined to seek the favors of Warren's wealth for himself, he had no such qualms when it involved a good friend, so he asked Warren to fly out to fetch him the day before Frank entered Cerebro. It meant missing a few classes, but EJ had agreed to cover notes for him, and it felt right to him that all of them should be there. This was pivotal. Why he was so certain of that, he couldn't have said. He wasn't the precog in Xavier's little mutant family, but he told Warren, "I have to be there," and so Warren came to fetch him.<p>

The hardest part would be seeing Jean.

And Jean didn't know he was coming, so of course she flushed and stuttered when she arrived in the sub-basement infirmary along with the rest of Xavier's students on that designated morning, only to find Scott already there with Warren and Frank. It would have been kind, she thought, had someone troubled to prepare her, then wondered rebelliously why she should think so, or feel guilty to see him. But she knew why. She ought to have told him about Ted Roberts weeks ago. Yet the complication of pain didn't necessarily require that she be on the receiving end of rejection. Her role in life had been as a mediator, and she disliked hurting Scott precisely because she cared for him, even while she couldn't care for him in the way that he wanted her to. He was just a boy. The fact that she didn't always think of him so confused her, and she refused to examine it too closely.

Thus flustered, she used the excuse of adjusting lab equipment that needed no adjustment in order to orbit the three young men clustered about the central infirmary bed. Acutely conscious of her, Scott followed her progress without once turning in her direction; she could read his awareness in his stance, slightly slouched, his side turned towards her so he could keep her in his peripheral vision, or as much of it as he had.

And Frank suppressed his amusement along with his irritation. There were days that he hated the boundaries he had set for himself. Just then, though, he had more important matters to worry over than the private drama of Scott and Jean. "I'm ready," he said to the professor and Dr. Richards, who waited with Henry beside the monitoring equipment. Ororo was there, too. She had made them explain it all to her, every part, from the remote electrodes they would attach to his cranium, to the failsafes built into Cerebro's design, set to pop the doors if he fell unconscious during operation. Her unease was evident in the delicately drawn brows pinched together above her sloped nose. It was the same frown she had worn for the past week since Reed Richards had arrived. Her struggles to protect him might have bothered him, but he adored her fierce self-sufficiency, and how she struggled to defend what she loved. She reminded him of his mother in the most unexpected ways, but was different enough that she failed to trigger all that Italian maternal competition.

And it was the two women in his life to whom he turned last. His mother kissed him roughly, but said nothing. They had done all their screaming the night before, and the night before that. Ororo didn't scream, but she had expressed her disapproval. Now, she clung to his neck in a rare public display of personal fear. Affection, she would show, if in a guarded way, but rarely fear. Then he glanced at Scott, perhaps the only one of his fellow students who wasn't fighting him on this. Scott nodded once, and he disengaged Ro, passing her to his friend so he could follow Xavier and Richards out, the rest tagging behind, all but Henry, who would monitor the equipment, and Jean, who would assist. It felt almost like a funeral march, and perhaps he should have laughed at that, but he refrained. He could die; he knew that. The power of Cerebro could fry the synapses in his brain, leaving him little better than a vegetable. But it was unlikely, and he knew that, too.

At the X-door, Xavier stopped, moving his chair aside to let Frank kneel down so Cerebro could scan his retina. His eye blinked briefly at the assault of light. "Welcome, Francesco," the machine's feminine voice said, doors whooshing apart on pneumatic hinges. He entered without looking back. Only Xavier followed down the suspended access tongue that led to Cerebro's core display. A chair had been brought in for him to sit there; the professor didn't require one. Seating himself, he glanced first about the geodesic room that enclosed them, then looked at his mentor and savior, smiling faintly.

"It will be all right," he said, because he knew that however calm Charles Xavier might appear, he feared this gamble that Frank was taking. "You are not forcing me into this. My gift is."

And here, at the crux, Xavier hesitated. _We might attempt an alternative solution.  
><em>

_And how long would it take?_

Xavier didn't reply, merely turned his chair to wheel away. He couldn't remain present while Frank ran Cerebro anymore than Frank could be present when Xavier did. Different gifts. And there was no need for final instructions; they had been reviewed multiple times. When he heard the door snick shut behind him, he raised the headpiece and turned it to face him, studying it a moment like an ancient soldier might contemplate his helm. Then he placed it over his head.

For a moment, there was nothing at all. He looked out into open emptiness and wondered, irrationally, if he ought to push a button somewhere, even while he knew he didn't need to.

_Your mind,_ the professor had told him repeatedly. _Cerebro responds only to the commands of your mind.  
><em>

Eyes sliding shut, he regulated his breathing, listened for his heartbeat, and concentrated on his various muscle groups, tensing and relaxing as Xavier had taught him to do - releasing. Releasing his body. He was not a physical being; he existed outside himself, slipped free of his fence of skin, and _reached . . . .  
><em>

Time shattered.

Fragments of the future blew past like blizzard snow, like cottonwood seeds on the wind in spring, too light to catch but fogging the very air.

There was no air here. There was nothing except the fragments, an impossible puzzle. He touched a coalescing image - _concentrate on someone dear to you_, Xavier had instructed - so he brought Ororo into focus. Ororo as he had seen her in his nightmares, but not fuzzed as in a dreamscape. Ororo versus the riot police, and at her feet, the body of Warren Worthington, white wings broken and splattered with his own blood. Off to the side, he could see his own body and there was an insane rage in Ro's face. Somewhere, Scott's voice rang out. "Ro, no!" Lightning ripped the space between her and the riot police, followed by gale wind. But bullets were faster, and Frank found that he could slow time, watch deadly slugs approach, but not stop them by the force of his will. That was not his gift. The first bullet struck her shoulder, the second just below her collarbone, and the third was placed perfectly in the center of her forehead, like a third eye into the mystery of human hate.

"Nooooo!"

He _wrenched_ it - twisted it sideways to a different version of the future.

The first bullet entered her shoulder, the second just missed her neck, and the third grazed her forehead. In the hot shock of agony, she went down, and a fourth pierced her heart.

_Wrench_ again. And again. But there were always bullets. And blood. And death.

He needed more perspective and rearing up, he pulled with him a rainbow strobe of divergent realities, but hovered above them all. If he couldn't hope to see every one, like a man trying to look across the ocean, he could still see many, a thousand fragment glimpses of Ororo - long hair, short hair, or no hair in a prison camp. Young, middle-aged, or old. With him or with someone else. Thin, plump, emaciated or, in one vision, ancient and fat and happy, the flesh of her face puckered into a roadmap of the years. So many possibilities for her, and how little he figured into most of them, but he had no time to explore that now. Reaching for the fat and happy future, he traced it back across its alternate pasts, looking for the dark time, the nightmare vision that faced them now, and how she had evaded it. All of a sudden it loomed out of the dark and off to the side, but just what, exactly, had been the pivotal roundhouse turn that had bypassed that terror track? What alternative choice had been made? He crossed the rail lines of other happy futures where human beings had avoided the mass butchery of other human beings, searching through each for the event that had made the difference. Faster and faster and faster, futures and pasts danced across his mind, bending and blending and twining in myriad possibilities.

Until he found it. The knot of commonality that he sought.

Ripping Cerebro's helm off his head, he panted while the doors slid aside. The abrupt stop had been a mistake perhaps, as almost immediately, he spewed all the contents of his stomach across the control board. But he had been unable to bear the pressure a moment longer. He could hear footsteps rushing in, and the sound of multiple voices. "Is he all right?" "Frank, are you all right?" "_Francesco, mi parli quello che ti ho vedere!_"

And it was easier to babble in Italian, so he did. English simply wouldn't come. The professor could understand, and he was the one who mattered. "A police force," he gasped as he accepted Warren's handkerchief to wipe his mouth. "A mutant police force. That's the answer. Non-mutants will fear us, but if we show them we can contain our own, it might make a difference. There is no guarantee, and in no future did I see complete peace, but in every future that escapes the massacres, this force exists."

"What force?" Scott asked, also in Italian, but his was awkward and inelegant. "Who will create this force?"

Francesco just glanced at Xavier, who could sift his mind to see what he had seen. And it was Xavier who answered, in English. "We will, Scott. We will create it, because we know now that we must."

* * *

><p><strong>Notes:<strong> Yes, Hulk fans, I've played a bit with Banner's history; it's closer to the _Ultimates_than to the core books.


	9. Slippery, Bright and Stupid

Later the same morning that Frank had entered Cerebro with nightmares and exited with a prophecy, Scott Summers faced Charles Xavier across the big oak desk in the professor's study. It was the first of many such meetings, although Scott had no inkling of that yet and the professor but the most general notion based on what Frank had permitted him to see. As always, their Nostradamus had kept much to himself, relating only necessities, and one of those necessities from Francesco's perspective was the pivotal role of the boy in the big, maroon leather chair across from Xavier. Yet Frank had advised against telling that to Scott. "He will lead them," Frank had promised, "but only if he makes that decision himself. If told to do it, he'll rebel." Xavier, who knew Scott as well or better than Frank, was inclined to agree. So now, he had asked Scott into his office to consult him not as the future commander of a mutant peacekeeping force, but as the son of a military officer who had some insight into combat preparation training, however by-proxy it might be. None of the rest of them had even that much experience. Xavier had meant only to create a school and sanctuary here - a defensive proposition - so he was at a loss as to where to begin.

"We need some kind of basic training, like what police go through, or military cadets," Scott said now, "but I don't think any of us is anywhere near ready for it. Well, I might be, and Ro, but Frank's physical shape . . ." Scott paused prudently.

"Frank is in very poor physical condition. You must be honest about these matters, Scott."

"He needs to eat better and seriously cut back on the smoking, and I'm not just saying that because I don't like it. His wind is terrible. Warren is okay, but he needs to exercise more; he could probably manage BMT now, but he'd be better off if he started a regular exercise program. Most recruiters advise that sort of thing when you enlist. Jean spends all her time in the lab. I doubt she could even lift her own weight or run half a mile. Hank's harder to judge, since his mutation is physical and he's naturally more adept and stronger than the rest of us, but he could be in a lot better shape than he is. All of us could be, and we're going to have to be. We're going to have to learn to use our powers offensively, too, plus learn how to handle standard weapons." He stopped, eying Xavier. "We can't be non-aggressive. Sir. Non-violent maybe, but not non-aggressive - not to do what Frank said we'll have to do."

He explained this because he knew well Xavier's own feelings about violence. Despite the professor's upper-class New England background, his mother had been a Quaker, and she had instilled those beliefs in her son: mediation, non-violent resolution of conflict, and toleration - even celebration - of difference. Scott Summers honored those beliefs, admired them, but he was also a pragmatist. There were people in the world who understood only force. If he had issues of his own with 'the military complex,' as he thought of it, he wasn't, and never had been, a pacifist. It was less a disagreement of ideology than of praxis, and injustice infuriated him, especially when backed up by force of arms. If he could protect someone weaker than he was by planting himself in front of a bully, he'd gladly do it.

"We will not use lethal force," the professor said now.

"I agree. But one of the reasons you train is so you don't have to, and we may wind up giving some bruises. A cop doesn't let a suspect deck him so the guy can run off and mug someone else. You stop him, whatever it takes. My dad taught me a long time ago that a soldier carries a gun hoping he'll never have to use it, but he'd better be willing to, and he'd better be a good shot. It's a weapon, not a toy or a prop. I could shoot a gun and hit a target by the time I was nine, and clean the gun afterwards. I've never killed anything in my life, not even a squirrel, but if I had to shoot at someone, I'm good enough to hit what I'm aiming at - and it wouldn't have to be in the torso, like shooting at the broad side of a barn. I could take someone down by hitting his thigh. People who don't know how to handle a gun are more likely to kill you by accident."

Leaning back in his wheelchair, Xavier listened to his first student become, ironically, the teacher. If he had been raised with Quaker values and doubted that he himself could ever kill another - even to save his own life - he did believe that there were times when force was called for. Moreover, he had seen in Frank's own mind that if they did not create this peacekeeping team, thousands, maybe millions, would die. Listening now to Scott, he understood, too, why Frank's visions had made Scott pivotal. He would lead this team as Xavier couldn't - and not just for the obvious physical reasons. Scott Summers believed such a team was necessary, but without glorifying it or seeing it as an end in itself. He would be a soldier when he needed to be, but when the war was over, he'd happily return to a peaceable life. And if Xavier might, in his heart, have sincere doubts that violence would ever truly _end_ violence, he also realized that he wasn't prepared to sacrifice thousands of lives for the sake of his own ideology. He was not that detached, especially not when he knew his own 'children' would be among the first to die. So if he couldn't pull the trigger, he could buy the best gun and be sure it was kept in shape.

Now, turning his chair slightly so that he could reach the blackboard to his right, Xavier picked up chalk. "All right. What do you think we need to do first?"

"Make everybody use the gym, do some basic exercise, get enrolled in self-defense classes like karate or something. We should practice more with our powers, too - not just to control them, but how to really use them." Scott wrinkled his nose. "But unless we go at this full time and sacrifice everything else, it's going to take a while, professor."

More prophetic words could not have come from Frank himself.

* * *

><p>"You're kidding us." Warren said.<p>

"No, I'm not." Gathered on squeaky leather couches around the coffee table in the den, Scott Summers faced his fellow students. Late afternoon sunlight streamed through the big arched windows behind them, overlaying dark wood with a glitter-golden sheen. Being in the hot seat left Summers uncomfortable, even backed up as he was by both Xavier's authority and Frank's quiet, 'Listen to what he says.' But he pressed on.

"Each of us spends half an hour in a gym every day. We eat more vegetables and less crap, and drink more water instead of coke or coffee. I'm as bad as anyone about that, I know. And we all enroll in a martial arts or self-defense class. I don't care what - pick something. Some style of karate, judo . . .whatever."

"Scott, I don't have _time_ - "

"Make time." Scott glared at Jean. Feeling irritable already in general, and spurned by her in particular, he lashed out with, "Look, people, if we're going to do this, we _all_ have to take it seriously. You can't use your research as an excuse, Jean."

"Just wait a minute here! I never asked to join your little mutant police force! There's more than one way to fight, and I'm not the soldier-type, Scott. I don't see any reason for all of us to participate. Let the ones who want to, do so, and the rest of us can do what _we_ do best: research and educate."

Further irritated because she had a point, but also angry now at having his advice challenged, Scott rose from the couch and stalked off, speaking as he went: "Fine. Don't listen to me. I'm not your drill sergeant. The professor just wanted me to share my opinion. Obviously, in your great age and wisdom, you know more about it than I do, so suit yourself." And he was out the door, leaving an uncomfortable silence in his wake.

"Who died and appointed him God?" Jean asked, needing to justify herself. No one replied.

After five beats, Ororo stood and headed out, almost casually, after Scott. "I think I shall go to the gym. Would any of you wish to keep me company?" Frank followed, and Warren, leaving Jean with Henry in the den.

Decidedly not looking after them, Jean reached for the recent issue of _National Geographic_ on the coffee table. "And just why, all of a sudden, am I Jean the Ogre?" she asked the air.

Sighing, caught between vexation and fondness and a certain pained empathy for Summers, Henry said, "You know what he's really irked about - and it has nothing to do with research versus exercise. You need to talk to him about Ted."

"Jesus, Hank!" She slapped the magazine back down on cherry wood. "That's why I haven't said anything to him yet! He's going to react like a four-year-old!"

"Maybe. Maybe, not. But you dodging the issue for - how many weeks now? - isn't making it easier. The longer you wait, the more likely he is to react badly."

"I don't want to hurt him."

"You're hurting him worse by not talking to him."

"But isn't that a bit arrogant? To just walk up and say, 'Look, Scott, I know you have this crush on me and . . .'?"

"It's not exactly a government secret. There's not a person in this mansion who doesn't know how badly he's got it for you."

"But he's never actually _said_ anything to me directly about how he feels, and it's kind of rude of me to just assume it before he does say something."

"Maybe, under normal circumstances. But there's a big pink elephant in the room and it's shitting on the carpet."

Jean laughed; she couldn't help it. For all his massive intellect, and unlike the rather esoteric Dr. Richards, Hank had no problem with colloquial conversation.

"I think it's worse to avoid the matter and hope it goes away," Hank continued. "His crush has lasted a year now - that's not a fleeting thing. He may be too young for you, but he does feel something powerful."

"Oh, Hank - mostly he just idolizes me! Or really, he has two 'Jeans' in his head: there's the 'Jean-of-his-fantasies' and then there's me, who he talks to on the phone once a week. Or did."

"Maybe they're not as separate as you think."

"But sometimes he acts like I hung the moon and stars! I'm not that special!"

Hank smacked her shoulder - lightly. "Quit that. I thought you were finally getting past that. It's your unreasonable expectations for yourself talking. You are special. You're smart, you're pretty, and you're . . ." he paused, thinking, then shrugged and said, "You're _nice_. That's not very flowery, maybe, but 'nice' is a good thing to be."

Jean was blushing. She'd never learned how to take compliments that weren't concerned with her intellect. "Thanks."

"There's plenty about you for someone to like without assuming he's inventing fantasies in his head. You've got - " Hank paused, unsure if he should go on, unsure if it might reveal too much about his own feelings that he'd rather she didn't know, but she was watching him expectantly, and Jean had a desperate need to be loved, even while she had difficulty believing that she was lovable. Hank laid the problem squarely at the feet of that horrible virago she called a mother. As the adored only child of Edna McCoy, Hank found Elaine Grey to be a caricature of what a mother should be. So perhaps Jean needed to hear what he had to say, and she had always viewed him as her trusted elder brother - safe. "You've got a kind of . . .warmth, coupled with this air of vulnerability. It attracts people. Or at least, it attracts men. Add to that an understated but very classy beauty. Then - " he went on, overriding her protest " - people get to know you and find there's an _imp_ behind the classy face, and a sharp brain that doesn't miss much. You're full of surprises, Jean, and you're not a hard person to care about."

She was blushing harder, a hand over her mouth as if she just didn't know what to do or say, and he wondered if any of the other men who adored her had any idea how fragile her ego really was.

"Now," he said, "why don't you go talk to Scott before he gets really impossible to live with?"

* * *

><p>"So you're really not coming back this summer?"<p>

Warren and Scott were sitting on a wooden bench beside the basketball court, a ball between them but relaxed for the moment. It wasn't an especially warm day for April, but Scott had forgotten how muggy New York could be. He'd been sweating heavily and smelled like a horse run full-out. Head back and eyes shut, he tried to soak up enough sun to counteract feelings of withdrawal. He said, "Nope, I've decided to take classes. I'll get my degree faster if I go through the summers, too. The way things are looking, that might matter."

Warren thought that what really mattered was Scott trying to avoid Jean, but he prudently didn't point that out. "So when am I supposed to give you piloting lessons?"

"I guess I'll sign up for them out there. Or something."

Warren didn't reply, just fanned his wings in frustration. "Hey," Scott said, still with eyes shut, "keep doing that; it feels good. I'm hot." Warren snorted, but complied, and thus it was that Jean found them lounging on the bench, Scott's hair fluttering a little in the breeze of Warren's wings.

When the wingfan stopped abruptly, Scott opened his eyes to see Jean standing in front of him - expression uneasy - and he sat up, blinking a bit from the bright light and glad for once that he had shades to conceal it. She smiled at them both, or grimaced might have been closer, then glanced at Warren. "War, can I talk to Scott for a bit?"

The request knocked Scott's stomach down somewhere to the vicinity of his ankles. Given her expression, there was no way this would be either happy or pleasant, and the only consolation he took was that she appeared none too pleased about it herself.

Vacating the bench with a half-pitying backwards glance, Warren headed off for the mansion, his wings sagging behind him. Jean took his place and snagged the abandoned basketball, turning it over and over in her hands. They were pragmatic hands with short nails, lean and strong. Scott watched her, waiting for her to begin. Finally, she flung the ball out at the court. It went further than Scott might have credited, halfway across black asphalt to bounce a few times off into a hedge of boxwood. "I really have absolutely no idea how to broach this," she said, "in a way that doesn't sound either stupid or presumptuous."

Between the flung ball and her words, much of Scott's anger flowed away, leaving him hollow and tired. "How about if I make it easier? You have a boyfriend."

"Maybe. I'm really not sure. I've never had a boyfriend before - well, not like this."

Her admission surprised him, and he found it easier to focus on the small instead of the big. "You've never had a boyfriend?"

"No, I haven't. Well, as I said, not like this. I wasn't allowed to date in high school. I told you that."

"Yeah, but - "

"And in college, down at Vandy, I went to a lot of parties, but the guys I met there weren't exactly _boyfriends_. Just your average jerk with a penis who wanted to get his rocks off."

And Summers blinked, because he'd never, ever heard Jean talk _that_ way.

"Then, when I went to Columbia, school was ALL and grades were my god. I had no time to date, and medical school's no better. So believe it or not, I'm twenty-seven years old and I think I may have my first real boyfriend."

"But you're not sure."

"No, I'm not."

Squinting up at the pellucid blue April sky, Scott considered. He had two options. He could throw a fit because she was dating someone else, or he could face the fact that he'd never honestly expected her to date him, and do what friends did: offer a sympathetic ear. A combination of the humid heat, his physical exhaustion, and her confidences made him settle on the latter. After all, and if he were fair, he did ponder the possibilities of Clarice Haight on occasion, and he just didn't have the energy to be angry anymore. Hurt was a slower thing, like a bruise; it wouldn't show dark and ugly until later. In the meantime, he used the dim shock of having his suspicions confirmed to allow him to react in a detached manner.

"Has he asked you out?"

"What?" Jean must not have expected him to quiz her.

"Has he asked you out? I mean, if he's asked you out more than once, especially if it's been three or four times - and he's not asking out anybody else - then yeah, I'd say he's your boyfriend, or thinks of himself that way. I would, if it were me." And then he winced, because that had come out more personally than he'd actually meant it.

But she was looking at him with real surprise, and like aloe, it soothed the burn a bit. "I'm not sure if he's asked me out or not. I mean, I guess he has. We've gone to dinner and things. But mostly, we just . . . find things to do, after we're done in the lab."

"But you hang out together a lot? And he's not hanging out with other girls that way?"

"Yes, that's right."

"Then Jean, I think you have a boyfriend." He tried to smile at her.

"But he hasn't even kissed me yet!" And then she winced, as she hadn't meant to blurt out _that_, not to him.

But he took it with surprising grace, and shrugged. "That doesn't necessarily mean anything. If you want him to kiss you, then you have to let him know."

"How?" She couldn't help but ask, though this was not a conversation she'd ever have dreamed she'd have with him.

He shrugged. "I don't know. Play it by ear. I mean, it's not like _we_ really know for sure if a girl wants to be kissed. For all we know, she might slap us silly. You gotta help a little, the first time, at least." He peered at her, intently. "You know, he might not be any more sure about it all than you are. He probably isn't. How long has this 'hanging out' been going on?"

"Three weeks."

And Jean was sure that, if she could have seen Scott's eyes, he'd be rolling them. Aloud, he said only, "Christ. This is molasses here." And it struck her - more forcefully than ever before - that she might have the extra years, but he was the one with all the experience, and she felt strangely _young_. He'd sat up even straighter and half turned towards her on the bench, his voice almost didactic. "Look, this guy probably doesn't have a clue if you're interested, if he's been hanging out with you for three weeks and he still hasn't made a move. I mean, there's slow and casual, and then there's glacial. I never took three weeks to kiss a girl." And Jean was amused by that because she was quite sure it was true, and she was equally sure that he had no idea how arrogant that sounded. "My advice is this - you kiss him."

"What?"

"I'm serious here. I thought these were the '90s? You know - women's lib is passé and real women Just Do It and all that shit. Er, crap."

Bitten by embarrassment as much as amusement, she almost laughed out loud but suppressed it into a spurt of giggles. "It's okay, Scott. You really don't always have to watch your language with me."

And that made him blush. "Well, I guess. But you always seem so . . . ladylike."

"And you're giving 'take the bull by the horns' kissing advice to a lady? I thought ladies were demure."

And she could tell that he had absolutely no idea how to respond to that. "It's okay," she said. "I'm just teasing. But I'm flattered, kind sir, that you think I'm a lady." And standing, she dropped him a little curtsy.

"Jean, you _are_," he mumbled, still embarrassed. "I mean, you really _are_."

Touched by this simple pronouncement more than by anything Hank had said earlier, she reached out to cup his cheek. "If I'm a lady, then you're equally a gentleman, Mr. Summers." He could have made this difficult; instead, he'd given her dating advice. He could have resented her for not choosing him; instead, he'd called her a lady and meant it with painful honesty. "But you're still allowed to say 'shit' in my hearing. I promise, I've said far worse when I've broken a test tube or three."

She hadn't thought he could possibly get any redder, but he was almost fluorescent. He was also smiling. Hand still on his cheek, she said, very softly, "Thank you, Scott. For _being_a gentleman."

* * *

><p>Scott remained in Berkeley for the summer in a subleased studio apartment while EJ went home to direct his church's summer youth camp. No longer living in the dorm, and with most of the other students he knew scattered, Scott lacked ready social distraction and when he wasn't in class, he might have holed up in his attic room noodling on his bass, ordering delivery pizza, and drinking lots of coke as he struggled with Complex Variables. But the suggestions he'd made to his fellows back in Westchester hadn't excluded himself, so he made time for the gym and resumed the study of Shotokan Karate that he'd begun in high school on a lark. He'd also signed up for piloting lessons.<p>

Phoebe was the only one of his personal circle who had remained in town, but she'd chosen to stay in the dorms, so he saw less of her than he might have expected. He could have stayed in the dorms as well, but it would have meant accepting another roommate for the duration, and to his mind, it was baiting Fortune to grant him a second EJ. He had neither the energy nor the inclination to begin anew with anyone less. That he and EJ would room together again in the fall hadn't been something either had discussed. They'd simply assumed it, and spent the end of spring looking for an apartment that was within cycling distance; EJ might have had a car but Scott didn't, and a parking permit amounted to a hunting license, in any case. Unfortunately, cost complicated things. Housing wasn't cheap; this was California, and worse, a college town. Apartment complexes banked on the demand, and rent for even a single bedroom anywhere within a half-hour walk was exorbitant. Yet being young men, and attractive young men who might hope for a date now and then, they had a desire for privacy, especially after living in cramped conditions for a year, and wanted two bedrooms. But two bedrooms went for over a grand, and EJ simply couldn't afford it. "No fucking way!" he'd announced after the seventh or eighth inquiry.

So Scott had offered to pay two-thirds. He had the means, and as the year had progressed, he'd grown less shy about occasionally using it, but EJ had refused. Pride. Scott understood pride. And thus the matter had remained unsettled when the semester had ended and EJ had returned to LA, leaving Scott to solve the dilemma.

In late June, when he had nearly despaired of finding anything and time was running out to secure even a one-bedroom for the fall, he spotted an ad in the local paper for a two-bedroom garage apartment on the south side. It was a bit far to walk, but decent for riding. And it was cheap, so he went to investigate, figuring at only $850 a month, there had to be a catch.

The owner was a widow in her early seventies who had moved west with her husband even before the boom of the fifties and sixties. Mrs. Eloise Gale. She still set her hair in old-fashioned curlers and bobby pins every night, and wore lipstick to the grocery, to which she drove in an antiquated Dodge Dart that had less than 70,000 miles on it.

"She must never drive the thing anywhere _but_ to the grocery," Scott told EJ later. "For the past twenty-five years!"

The apartment itself had turned out to be old but clean, with high ceilings, wooden floors, and double-hung windows set to maximize air circulation. They'd have to live without a garbage disposal or central AC, but the dorms hadn't had AC either, and the place did have a washer and dryer for their use. Mrs. Gale had explained the low rent thus, "I want some nice young men to live on the property. It's not safe these days, you know, for a woman alone. The rent is low, but it includes all the yard work, fixing things in the house, and keeping up my car. I'm mostly blind, you see, and can't get around so well." (And that was a bit alarming to think about, if she were still driving.)

Mrs. Gale had been a WAVE in World War II - Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service - and when she had learned that Scott was the son of an US Air Force pilot, and that his projected roommate was the son of a minister, that had more or less sealed the deal . . . which had been concluded with nothing more than a polite pat on his shoulder. Scott hadn't been too sure what to make of the informality, but he'd phoned EJ to let him know that they had a place for the fall, and could he come up the next weekend to meet their landlady?

Unfortunately, the small detail that EJ was the son of a _black_ minister had never been specified. It simply hadn't occurred to Scott that he should - he'd become accustomed to Berkeley being Berkeley - and it equally hadn't occurred to Mrs. Gale that a nice white boy might voluntarily choose to room with a black boy, however nice. So when EJ had arrived with Scott on the quaint, white spindle-rail porch of their landlady's house and Scott introduced him with, "Mrs. Gail, this is Elijah Haight," everyone was surprised.

She'd stared through the screen, her age-puckered mouth with its crooked, too-pink lipstick dropped in shock. "But I've never rented to a colored before," she'd said.

And Scott hadn't been sure for what he'd been was more embarrassed: that he'd brought his friend there to be insulted, that it hadn't occurred to him to verify that it wouldn't be an issue in the first place, or that he'd called her 'a sweet old lady' to EJ on the phone. Beside him, he'd felt EJ stiffen. "You're the son of a minister?" she'd asked. The screen door had remained closed.

"Yes, ma'am. My father's head minister at Bethany Baptist in LA."

"Oh, a Baptist! I'm a Baptist, too. Northern Baptist, though."

"Same here," EJ had said. "American Baptist," using the more recent, less colloquial title for the branch.

And the screen door had opened. EJ had glanced at Scott, who'd shrugged, and they'd gone in. Odd, the small details that could open a door, or leave it shut, and Scott had wondered what Mrs. Gale would think if she'd known the 'nice white boy' was a mutant. Then again, it might matter to her more that he was an agnostic, lapsed Catholic.

The only other event of any significance occurred in early August as the summer semester drew to a close. Scott, having just booked his first hours of solo flight, asked Phoebe if she'd like to go out for a bite after, to celebrate. If he talked more often to EJ by email, or to Frank by phone, neither was present and that evening, he wanted company with skin on. So they met in Asian Square and had Japanese at Yokohama Station - Phoebe ordered - while Scott regaled her with an account of his first solo, a story well-honed now by its fifth retelling (EJ, Warren, the professor, and Ororo had all heard it already). After dinner, they got a little drunk on cheap beer that they were too young to buy, but Phoebe had a friend who was willing to pick up two six packs if they footed the bill, and they got to take one back to Scott's studio apartment. They began the night sitting on his sofa, talking about anything from the California water crisis to reincarnation.

They ended the night in Scott's bed.

It wasn't an easy morning. He hadn't slept with a girl in over two years, and was rusty on morning-after etiquette. In fact, he'd never _slept_ with a girl at all, as in "go to sleep in the same bed after sex." Not being the morning type, he woke after she did, to the sounds of her rummaging about in his bathroom, looking for God knew what. Blinking in the brightness of a California noon, he lay flat on his back for a few minutes, staring at blurred, geometric shadows on the white ceiling and listening to the sound of construction work somewhere in the distance, while he pondered how best to proceed.

He wasn't in love with her and she wasn't in love with him, but she'd felt more than friendship and inebriated lust. Mutant or not, he occupied a special place in Phoebe's world. She didn't occupy the same one in his, and hurting her had never been his intention. So he hauled himself out of bed to make his way into the bathroom, where he found her bent over the sink, finger in her mouth, scrubbing her teeth with a makeshift digit toothbrush. "You can use mine," he said. "I don't think you'll give me any germs that I haven't already caught."

Eyeing him sidewise and grinning, she spit foamy toothpaste into the sink, then said, 'Thanks. But that'll do." Her unwashed hair was lanky, but she was prettier than he might have expected, the morning after. He still wasn't in love with her, and almost wished that he could be. How to explain without either lying or seeming like a heartless bastard? He'd suddenly become the kind of boy that mothers warned their daughters about.

Christ. Was there an automatic reset button for the last twenty-four hours?

Splashing water on her face, she wiped it off with his striped towel, then came over to slip an arm around his neck and lean in to kiss him -

- and he pulled his head back. It was automatic, not planned. She stared while his mind chased its own tail, trying to figure out what to say. Nothing came. He opened his mouth and nothing came out while he watched pain and humiliation crumple her face. Letting him go, she pushed past him out into the little bedroom area, snatching up her discarded jeans and yanking them on while she collected her socks and bra. She'd put her tank top back on the night before, to sleep in. Now, turning her back on him, she pulled the top up over her head and snapped on the bra.

And he just stood there. His mind was blank and white, and he was making a terrible botch of this. He could hear her breath hitch in a way that told him she was swallowing sobs, and he'd never felt so wretched. "Just your average jerk with a penis." The words floated back to him, words Jean had said about boys at Vandy. Drunk boys at parties.

And that was _him_, he thought. He'd been the drunk boy, and he ran a hand over his face. He hadn't taken off his sleeping goggles yet and had to look ridiculous, but it felt fitting that he look ridiculous. "Phoeb. Stop it. Please."

She was putting on her socks and shoes now, and she didn't stop at all. Light slid in through the blind slats and made lines across her form. She said nothing.

"Phoebe. It's not what you think."

Finished, she jerked to her feet and screamed at him, "What the hell am I supposed to think then?"

He couldn't answer because it wasn't pretty. "I care about you," he said finally, helplessly.

She continued to glare for perhaps five breaths, then snagged her purse where it had been abandoned on his little eat-in table and stalked to the door. "Blow it out your ass, Summers, along with the rest of your shit." And she slammed the door behind her.

He slid down the edge of the doorjamb until he was sitting on cold tile.

* * *

><p>"Not yet, not yet," Jean whispered, pulling Ted's hand up from the zipper on her slacks. The other hand was busy with her left breast and his mouth busy at the right through the fabric of her bra, and oh, if she could rub her thighs together just right, there would be enough pressure for her to reach her climax, but she wasn't ready yet for his hand to help with that.<p>

"Okay," he whispered now around cloth and nipple, and had the good manners not to demand 'when?' Jean couldn't have given him an answer if he had.

It wasn't their first time at this. Usually once a day, in his apartment, or her room at the mansion, or even the lab closet when Hank and Banner were gone, they were at each other with hands and mouths and everything was heated, plunging headlong and half-blind towards a consummation that Jean became increasingly aware she wasn't sure she wanted.

She didn't love him. She liked him - liked him a lot, in fact, and he had a clever tongue, gentle fingers and a good heart. But love him? Jean wasn't sure she knew what love was, and sometimes she asked herself if she had to love him to have sex with him - it had never been her requirement before - but if not, then why did she hesitate?

Guilt, maybe. She wasn't in love with him. But she wondered sometimes if he were in love with her? That, she didn't know, and was afraid to ask because if one asked, shouldn't one want the answer? And she didn't.

So they didn't talk. They made out in bedrooms and backrooms and lab closets and they didn't talk about it except in sentences of less than six words.

* * *

><p>Scott Summers had always thought of himself as a good and responsible person. He didn't steal, he didn't say bad things about people behind their backs (usually), and he held the door open for others if he got there first. He'd done things that embarrassed him, or of which he wasn't proud, and he'd done things that had turned out badly despite good intentions. Yet even when he'd blown out the wall at his high school and given bruises and broken bones in the process, it had been an accident. After, he'd gone to great lengths to ensure that no more accidents happened. He wasn't cruel and he wasn't selfish.<p>

Yet now he'd done something that was both, and he had no idea how to fit that act into his previous views of himself. Could a good person do a bad thing and still be a good person? Some actions rotted the soul, like moral gangrene. He was sick with it, and spent most of that Sunday either sitting on his couch and brooding or taking out his frustrations practicing the Big Four _kata_ of Shotokan. He'd been sunk in self-pity before, but this ran much deeper. This was _shame_, dark and awful and sharp.

He turned over in his head a few times who he might call to talk it out - see if there was some way to _fix_ it. Summers was inclined to regard life in the active rather than the passive tense. Yet talking about it would mean admitting his guilt, and how could he face EJ with this? Phoebe was EJ's friend, too. And Jean? How could he phone Jean and tell her what he'd done after she'd called him a gentleman? He hadn't been a gentleman last night. He couldn't tell the professor either, couldn't face disappointing the man. There was Warren, and Frank, but he wasn't sure either would be terribly helpful, and Ro would show no pity. He tried calling Phoebe herself once, but she hung up on him as soon as she heard his voice.

Sometime towards evening, his phone rang. He let the answering machine pick up. "Summers, it's Lee. I've got the day off next Saturday and wondered if you'd like to go out on the water. Buzz me back, and do it before Tuesday. If you're not free, I'll find somebody else." That wasn't a threat, just Lee's customary bluntness.

He sat up on the couch. Once before, Lee had given him good advice with regard to Phoebe; maybe she could help him again. Jumping for the phone, he tried to catch her before she hung up but snagged the receiver only in time to hear the phone click. And that was probably just as well. This wasn't a conversation to tackle across a barrier of plastic and fiber optics. Putting on his sandals, he fetched his bike.

Getting to Lee's took a good ride, and he sweated heavily in the August swelter though it was almost dusk. On some level, he found that purifying, the salt-scent of his own body and the salt-scent of the bay. The sun was already below the horizon and the sky was a hot-wax blend of oranges and blues and a vivid violet (colors he knew rather than colors he saw), streaked here and there by the dark shadows of cirrus clouds. There was no breeze and the heat lay thick on the black concrete of Forrester's Boat Rental parking lot, radiating up through the soles of his sandals. The place was closed for the night, only the lights in the living quarters behind indicating that anyone was there. Scott hoped that Lee hadn't gone out for the evening as he leaned his bike against one of the wooden columns on the porch. Sea air had aged the wood, cracking it in places. He rang the bell, then waited. It was a long wait before a man in late middle age opened the door. A white under-tank revealed thick, tanned arms corded with muscle from long years of physical labor and marked by almost stereotypical tattoos. He grunted when he saw Scott. "Can't you read the No Solicitation sign, kid?" He pointed to a white sign in the window beside the door.

"I'm not selling anything. I'm Scott Summers, a friend of your daughter's . . ."

"Yeah, I recognize the name. Come on in." Turning, he yelled back into the depths of the house. "Lee! It's one of your band guys."

Exiting the kitchen, a diet coke in one hand and a plastic tub of cottage cheese in the other - spoon in her mouth - Lee raised both her eyebrows at him, amused. Taking out the spoon, she said, "A phone call back would've been just fine, y'know."

Ignoring her attempt at humor, and uncomfortable standing just inside the doorway with her father watching, he shuffled his feet and said, "You want to go for a walk on the dock? Just to talk, I mean."

Still amused, she said, "Actually, I'd rather sit on the dock so I can eat my dinner. Come on." And she led him around to the dockside of the building. The hot-wax sky was dimming to royal purple and security lights glittered on bay water. Waves made slapping and sucking sounds at the wooden struts and the hulls of boats. Somewhere nearby a fish leapt. The scent of brine and the bite of gasoline from engines was strong. She took him some distance from the house where they seated themselves on sun-warmed wood. The rising and falling whine of passing cars marked the access road, invisible behind a sandy ridge. "So what's up?" she asked.

"I screwed up," he replied. "I screwed up pretty damn bad." Angry at himself again, he plucked a stray pebble from the dock and flung it hard at the water. "Just another jerk with a penis."

She shook salt from a little pewter shaker into the tub of cottage cheese and ate in silence, let the weight of that draw him out. After a while, he began to talk, haltingly and in a disjointed fashion, telling her what had transpired the night before, and that morning. When he was done, she said, "And you want me to fix it?"

"I don't want _you_ to fix it. But yeah, it needs fixed. Or something. You gave me pretty good advice once before."

Finished now with her cottage cheese, she set the tub between her knees and tapped the spoon against the white plastic side. "You need to talk to her."

"I tried that!"

"No, you didn't. You called her and let her hang up on you. Why don't you go over to the dorm and sit outside her door? She'll have to come out eventually, if just to go to the bathroom." She studied his face in the near dark. "Are you sorry?"

"Yes."

"I mean are you truly sorry?"

"_Yes_. I wasn't trying to hurt her."

"You asked her out."

"No, I didn't. I just asked if she wanted to go eat dinner with me. I didn't ask her _out_."

"Did _she_ know the difference?"

"We've done it before - just go eat together, I mean. Without the beer. But I don't . . . I never wanted to be the kind of guy who _uses_ people. A girl, I mean. Well, not anyone, but . . . Jesus Fucking Christ!" He pressed his face against his drawn up knees. "I can't even make any goddamn sense talking!"

He felt the back of her hand slide against the side of his face. It was soft and cool like forgiveness. "Scott, you need to talk to her, not to me. You're not a bad guy, y'know. You just made a mistake. It happens. You care enough to want to fix it - that says a lot about you."

He raised his face. "I don't want to be a jerk with a penis."

That got a grin out of her. "You said that already. More or less. Did she call you that?"

"No. But Jean - you know, my friend Jean, back in New York - "

"Scott, everyone who knows you knows who Jean is."

He blushed. "Anyway, she was talking about guys at Vandy that way. They did the same thing to her and I just . . . I'd like to hurt them, because they hurt her. I don't want to _be_ like that. Maybe I should, you know, go out with Phoebe for a while, so she doesn't think I just used her."

"Shit, no! Look - you can't make it not hurt that you don't feel about her like she feels about you, not anymore than Jean can make it not hurt for you." He winced internally; that wasn't a comparison he'd previously considered. "But dating her for a while and then breaking up is really condescending."

She pushed herself to her feet, empty plastic tub in one hand and offering him leverage up with the other. "You're still a jerk with a penis, Summers, but you're basically a decent jerk. Try starting with an honest apology and go from there."

He took her advice, but cornering Phoebe required two days and careful strategy since he didn't want to embarrass them both by conducting this particular conversation in a dorm hallway. He finally caught her outside the library computer lab and followed her from the building. Either her anger had filtered away or she was tired of avoiding him, but she left the sidewalk and headed out across the grass into the shade of an old Valley Oak, where she waited for him to catch her up. "Would you quit stalking me!" she snapped, when he did.

"I'm not stalking you. I'm trying to apologize, dammit."

"I don't want your goddamn excuses - "

"I'm not offering any! I said I was trying to apologize. It's not the same thing. Now would you please shut up and listen to me?"

She did. They were both breathing heavily. When it was clear that she was giving him a chance, he said, "I'm sorry, Phoeb. What happened shouldn't have happened. I wasn't trying to take advantage of you. I just got drunk. That's not an excuse. It's a reason; that's all. What happened was a mistake."

Leaf-filtered sunlight glinted off moisture in her dark eyes and she looked down. "Gee, thanks. I was your big mistake."

"Fuck," he muttered and rubbed the bridge of his nose, pushed up his glasses absently. "Not like that. What happened was a mistake because what you wanted and what I wanted . . ." He trailed off. He was just digging himself deeper and he had no clue how to get out of the pit, until he thought about what Lee had said on Sunday night, comparing his situation with Phoebe to Jean's with him. If the shoe were on the other foot, he wondered, what he would want to hear?

"Listen," he said softly. "I like you. I don't love you, but I like you a lot. That's not feeding you a line. I'm not in the habit of going to bed with people I don't give a rat's ass about. I've just been lonely. I needed somebody to touch. It wasn't only about the sex. But I should have . . . I should have been clearer, at the outset. I wasn't. I let things happen because it seemed like a good idea at the time. You are _not_ someone I want to hurt, Phoeb." He said it as softly as he could. "It hurt me, too. It hurts me, to see you hurting."

"You like me," she whispered, "but you don't like me _that_ way."

The smallness of her voice made his heart ache. "No," he whispered back. "I'm sorry."

"Why?"

And how, he puzzled, should he answer that? "I don't know. It's just . . ." He shrugged helplessly. "It's not something you can make happen."

"Is it something about me - ?"

"No." He cut her off before she could finish. "No. I told you, I like you. I like talking to you, I like spending time with you. You're fun. But the . . . that _click_ . . . it just didn't happen for me."

"Then why . . . I mean, if the . . . if you're not attracted to me _that_ way, then why did you go to bed with me?"

"Christ, Phoeb, you're not exactly ugly! And I told you - it seemed like a good idea at the time. Don't you ever, just . . . you know, need to touch someone? Get a hug from a friend?"

"Sex is pretty far from a hug, Scott!"

"Yeah. But it wasn't just about the sex." He stopped, so he could figure out what he was trying to say. And why _had_ he gone to bed with her? Drunk and horny hadn't been all of it. "Guys . . . we can separate sex and love pretty easily. But this wasn't that. I told you, I'm not in the habit of sleeping with just anyone who's willing. Some guys can, but I'm not made that way. I have to trust the person."

"Because of the glasses?"

"_No. _It's just . . . the kind of guy I am. It's true I haven't been to bed with anybody since - " He tapped the glasses in question. "But not like you mean. I needed a lot of things on Saturday. I needed to touch somebody, I needed to know that someone wasn't scared to death of me, and I needed to know that I was still attractive. Maybe it sounds dumb, but guys worry about that kind of thing, too."

She was actually listening to him now, and he recalled the professor's advice when he had first told EJ about his power - that if he wanted forgiveness, he had to bare his own fears.

"Where things went wrong," he continued, "is that I didn't make it clear. I just let it happen because I needed it. You needed something else, and thought it was something else, and I didn't tell you otherwise - "

"You knew how I felt."

"Yeah, I did. Sort of." And that _hurt_. Saying that _hurt_. It punched him hard in the belly because it was true, that he'd wounded someone else because he'd let it be all about him. "I had a pretty good idea, anyway. But I was too drunk to think about it. And that was . . ." He looked away, then finished, very softly. "That was wrong, and I feel awful because I do like you, and I didn't . . . I never wanted to be that kind of person. I never wanted to hurt someone that way."

He felt the sharp sting on his cheek before he quite registered that she'd slapped him, and not with a little tap. She'd slapped him hard enough to knock his glasses askew. Putting a hand up to the burn, and straightening his glasses, he stared at her. She was genuinely crying now, and trying to talk in spite of it. "You are a piece of work, Scott Summers. I don't know whether to believe you or not - that you're sorry. You knew. You _knew_. It's not okay, y'know? An apology doesn't make it suddenly okay." She swallowed. "I guess I should thank you for bothering to make one, but I don't feel thankful right now. I just . . . Go away. Quit following me. I don't want to see you. Not for a while. Maybe in a few weeks, when the semester starts. Maybe then I can see you and not want to gut you. But not right now." And she left him standing there, a hand still on his face.

Feeling shaky, he went into the library to the men's room and stared in the mirror at the red mark on his cheek, and he understood several things all at once. Good people could do bad things, and words weren't always a magic fix. Illusions about the self were fragile and shattered easily; he wasn't the person he'd thought he was. And trust, once broken, was slow to mend. But most of all, he realized that feelings were like fish, slippery and bright and stupid. They didn't respond to reason.

Phoebe was mad at him. Furious. And rightfully so. And _he_ was mad at Jean. Still. He just hadn't let himself admit it since he'd left Westchester. But he _was_ angry, deeply, deeply angry, and bruised in all his tender places. And those bruises had finally shown up in all their dark glory.

Jean didn't love him. Not like he wanted her to. And he couldn't make her, not anymore than Phoebe could make him feel something he didn't feel. But understanding that didn't make him hurt any less, either. It didn't make him feel less small and unimportant. It didn't make him not wonder why Jean couldn't love him back. "What's wrong with me, that she doesn't love me?" he asked the mirror, then felt immediately stupid for the question. It sounded so pathetic.

Bending over the sink basin in the empty bathroom, he took off his glasses, squeezed his eyes shut and let himself cry.

* * *

><p>"Hey, boy-o."<p>

"Hey."

"I haven't heard from you in a while, not even email. I got a little worried. You okay out there?"

There was a short silence on the other end of the phone line and Jean waited uneasily. Then he said, "I don't really feel like talking to you right now, Jean."

Belly-drop alarm. "Why? What's wrong?"

Another silence, then, in a tight voice, he said, "You just . . . Jean, I'm not a gentleman. Not really. I'm just a guy, okay? I can't always be reasonable and grown-up. I know you can't control how you feel - or how you _don't_ feel - about me. But I can't stop what I feel, either, and I'm kind of angry right now. I need some space, so I can learn how not to be so angry. It's not . . . I don't blame you. I don't blame you. But I'm still angry. So don't call me again. And don't send me email for a while." And he hung up.

Sighing, at once irritated and guilty, Jean leaned back against the headboard of her bed and stared at the ceiling. 'Feelings,' she remembered the professor telling her once, 'are neither right nor wrong. They just are. And sometimes, we must forgive ourselves for them.'

Or forgive others, she added.

Scott was right, she thought. He wasn't a gentleman, or a character in a medieval romance, and she'd been unfair to cast him in that role. He was just human, and human feelings were sometimes messy.

* * *

><p><strong>Notes:<strong> This is, admittedly, a different genesis for the X-men. Xavier's views are based on how he was presented in the film, which struck me as more peaceable than comic-Xavier.


	10. Fire and Ice

It was early in September when Ororo found Dr. Reed Richards in her arboretum, circling the floor like a beagle on the scent, pausing occasionally to bang with his foot on dirt or concrete flooring. She chalked it up to the random weirdness that Xavier's students had come to expect from the man. He also chased pigeons and wrote on walls because, he said, there were no chalkboards big enough for his equations. He inhabited an intellectual sphere so far beyond the rest of them that he lived in a different dimension.

"And I had thought that Hank was odd, hanging from the ceiling to read his medical journals," Ororo had told Frank and Warren. "At least he is able to conduct a normal human conversation."

"Hank says there are two kinds of researchers," Warren had explained. "Pragmatists and theorists. He's the former but this Richards guy is the latter."

"And Dr. Richards is not a mutant?"

"Just 'of the normal variety,' as the professor put it. He's some kind of Einstein - started college at fourteen and had two different by twenty-two . . . from Harvard, no less . . . and about twenty-five patents already. But his ideas are so weird, most of the people he works with think he's a kook."

"What does he do, in any case?" Ororo had asked. "He is in and out of here without much rhyme or reason. And how does he know the professor?"

"Research for NASA, down in Huntsville. And I don't know how he knows the professor. Xavier just seems to _know_ people. I think it's his hidden mutant ability." Warren had grinned. "There are corporate presidents and prime ministers of small countries with fewer contacts than Professor Xavier."

They'd laughed, because it was true. And Reed Richards continued to appear and disappear at the mansion at odd times that fall, doing inexplicable things. They became accustomed to him, like the family pet who occupies a sofa but flees the room when the noisy children arrive. Ororo could count on one hand the number of times that he'd spoken to her.

* * *

><p>The California sun at midday pinned down shadows sharp at the edges and compressed them squat like a checkerboard of people on a summer-brown lawn. Music drifted from a CD player, Robert Johnson's rough vocals on stripped-down delta blues, turned low to avoid drawing the neighbors' ire until the sound was just swallowed in the open air. Voices pierced louder, the white noise of twelve people at conversation, or twelve now that EJ had returned from the apartment above. "PAR-<em>TY!<em>" he bellowed at the top of his lungs as he gallumped down the side steps carrying a red and white plastic cooler stocked with Coke and beer, the latter contributed by their guitar-player Rick Chabon (along with the Robert Johnson) and by Warren, who had flown in from New York with Frank and Ororo. There was homemade mead as well, from Lee, of all the unlikely suspects. Following EJ was Clarice and her friend Diane, bearing bags of chips, buns, condiments, and the hamburger meat to grill. Scott had been assigned grill duty, with Warren to keep him company.

"Where is this landlady?" Warren asked as Scott took the meat from Diane and laid down the first set of burgers on the small grid; only six fit at once. "And wouldn't she have conniptions if she knew you guys were doing this?"

"Maybe. But she's off to visit her daughter in San Jose, so this was the ideal weekend. We're hardly going to _trash_ the place, but she doesn't know that, and we didn't feel like having her peer out a window every fifteen minutes to check up on us. She's nice but . . . a little nosey." And he wrinkled his own nose at that. "There's also the obvious advantage . . . " By way of conclusion, he gestured with the spatula to Warren's great white wings, unveiled in full view. Mrs. Gale's small backyard ran lengthwise from the rear of her house alongside the garage, tree-shaded and set with flower beds, bright now with fall aster, and the whole of it was screened from neighbors by high hedges and tropical trees with wide leaves. Thus, the first thing that Warren had done upon arriving was shuck his jacket and the wing rack beneath it, stretching out all sixteen feet to the delight of the other guests. They'd surrounded him with oohs and awws and requests to _pet_ him. He'd been happy to oblige, making Scott, Frank and Ororo exchange a glance and break up laughing. "He is a whore," Frank had said, which had only made Scott and Ororo laugh harder.

Yet this, Scott thought now to himself, was how the world ought to be: black and brown and white, mutant and non-mutant, and no one gave a damn, or not in a negative way. Six months ago, he'd still been hiding his gift. Today, he had on his visor and was demonstrating his beam control by popping the caps off beer bottles as a party trick, the same as others might tie cherry stems with their tongues. (He'd only broken one bottle.)

Warren gestured towards someone behind Scott's back. "Who's the Asian chick who keeps eyeing you?"

"That's Phoebe," he said.

"She got a crush?"

"Not exactly, not anymore. It's . . . complicated."

"In other words, none of my damn business."

Frowning, Scott turned over the burgers and added cheese to half of them. Dripping fat hissed on the charcoal. "Something like that." If his guilt had faded soft like old calico in the past month, he still couldn't quite look Phoebe in the eye. At least she was speaking to him again, but when circumstances threw them together in a group, they usually maintained a wary distance. EJ knew something had happened, but for once, had been circumspect in his inquiries, accepting Scott's quiet, "There was a little blow up at the end of the summer," without pushing further. If he'd spoken to Phoebe about it, Scott didn't know. Now, EJ was off playing host, chatting up both Phoebe and Elizabeth and introducing them to Frank and Ororo, but that meant he couldn't keep an eye on who was sitting alone in a corner. That was Warren's peculiar gift.

"Speaking of chicks watching - who's the one sitting it out on the steps?"

Scott glanced up to check, then said, "That's Diane, EJ's sister's roommate." And he looked around for Clarice, but didn't spot her. Normally, Diane was Clarice's taller, darker shadow. "I don't know where Clarie went."

"Back upstairs, I think. Can you handle the grill alone without burning anything? I'll go talk to her friend."

Scott snorted. "If I remember right, the last and only time _you_ ever tried grilling anything, you couldn't even get the goddamn charcoal lit. It's too _plebian_ for you, Blue Blood." But he kicked in friendly fashion at Warren's foot, to take out the sting, then added, more softly, "Listen, before you go - Deedee can't walk too well. That's why she spends most of her time sitting down. She was in a bad fire as a kid, and has braces on her legs. She's a little shy."

Blond brows lowered, Warren said only, "Ah. Maybe we could compare living with hidden metal racks." Scott didn't answer and Warren ambled off, taking a circuitous route so she wouldn't think he'd come to babysit, then turned on the Worthington Charm, but at low wattage, his intent being to warm, not dazzle; she responded like a morning glory, opening slowly to brilliance. Scott smiled and, the first set of burgers done, loaded them onto a paper plate, calling out the news as people left off chatting, drawn by the lure of food.

Clarice had returned as well, and seeing Diane suitably occupied, took the opportunity to join Scott. He'd wondered how long until she'd show up to orbit him. That had been the pattern of things between them since the semester had begun. Each might go off on their own for a while, but soon enough, gravity pulled one or the other back like a comet to a sun - and it wasn't always Clarice to him. Now, she said without preamble, "You're looking out for Diane."

He grinned. "Not me, actually. Warren noticed all by himself. He sees more than people give him credit for - sees more than most people period."

She studied Warren thoughtfully for a moment, then asked - or mused, really - "Do you think he'd take me flying?"

Her words stirred a complicated jealousy in Scott's gut, and he jerked up his head, jaw clenching until the muscles jumped slightly. "I guess he's got the more romantic mutation."

She glanced back at him in surprise. "What bit your ass?"

Embarrassed, he gave a little shrug - "Nothing" - and damned a complexion that flushed beet red at the least provocation. He kept his eyes on the grill, so when she moved a bit closer to slip a hand up his back, rubbing his muscles, he started. But he liked it. At least until he noticed Phoebe watching them.

"Hey," he said softly, and shifted away from her hand. "These are done; move back. I don't want to accidentally burn you."

And so it went throughout lunch. With Phoebe around, he restrained his interaction with Clarice, yet even so, they sat together to eat, and she stole potato chips off his plate while his leg brushed hers. Around mid-afternoon, Phoebe and Elizabeth took their leave of the party - to Scott's ashamed relief - but it let him relax as they cleaned up debris. At one point, he followed Clarice upstairs, bearing unused plates and napkins. The place was empty, no one even in the bathroom; a few shouts of laughter drifted up from below, and traffic buzzed past on the main road, but here it was quiet, the afternoon sunlight streaming in wide windows and glowing a bit on blond-wood floors. They moved around each other in the kitchen, bodies sometimes brushing, and she began to chatter nervously while he stayed silent, a growing agitation pinching his throat closed. He watched her mouth, wondering what she tasted like. It seemed to him as if everything in the past few weeks had been hurtling downhill towards this moment alone together, and finally, frustrated, he made her put away the Tupperware of cooked hamburger meat, then steered her out of the kitchen, backing her up against the sofa near one window. She stared at him. He stared back. Then bending, he kissed her silly as yellow light spilled over them both. She ran her tongue along his and sucked at his lips until the tension broke and they laughed in each other's mouths. Then they went back downstairs again, holding hands. The fall afternoon light glittered, he thought.

* * *

><p>"How was the party?" Jean asked Ororo on Sunday evening after the younger three students had returned from California. Neither she nor Hank had been invited. They hadn't been told <em>not<em> to come, but they hadn't been invited, and Hank's exclusion had been largely a cover for excluding her. Scott's wording to Warren on the phone had been, 'I'm sure Hank and Jean are too busy in the lab . . .'

She was hurt by that, and a bit jealous, but mostly, she'd come to realize that she _missed_ him, and beyond hurt or jealousy, she wanted to know how he was. But he wasn't telling her, so she sought out Ororo instead. She might have turned to Frank, or Warren, but she suspected that Ororo noticed more. "Is his new apartment nice?"

Ororo had been making tea for herself in the kitchen, and now paused to consider how she ought to reply. After a year at the mansion, she'd come to appreciate better the deep conflict in Jean between scientific curiosity and a refined, society upbringing, between instinctive compassion and an ingrained, polite diffidence. Jean was trying to be nosey without being nosey, and doing it badly. Licking honey off her spoon, Ororo turned back to her tea mug. "The apartment is old but adequate for two men, and cleaner than I had expected. Not, apparently, thanks to Scott."

Jean grinned at that, remembering that the boy might have kept his shirts tucked in, but his dirty clothes had always remained wherever they landed, until laundry day.

"The party," Ororo went on, "was nice, and quiet - until the band decided to play. He sings very well."

Jean was smiling. "Did they get in trouble with their neighbors for the music?"

"No. At least, not that I am aware."

Jean reached for the sponge sitting behind the faucet and began to wipe up the counter. Nervous energy. "Did he seem . . . okay? Happy?"

Sipping tea and wandering over to the rear kitchen door overlooking the herb garden, Ororo stared out the screen into the dusk, unsure what Jean was driving towards. She was well aware that Scott and Jean weren't talking as much as they had - if not aware that they weren't talking at all - but Scott hadn't shared the details even with Frank, who was perhaps his closest confidant at the mansion. Well, his closest male confidant. Finally, she turned back to where Jean was still cleaning up the kitchen counter. Taking a wild shot in the dark and hoping that intuition would find the bull's-eye, she said, "You did know that he has a girlfriend? Her name is Clarice."

Jean's hand paused, only momentarily, then she continued cleaning. "No. I didn't know."

Ah, Ororo thought, and decided not to explain that the relationship had apparently bloomed in full only that very weekend. "She is his roommate's sister."

And Jean started to laugh. Dropping the sponge in the sink, she leaned back against the counter and giggled. "Oh, Scott! First, he gets a crush on me. Now, he's dating his roommate's sister? The boy doesn't have a sensible bone in his body!"

"Actually," Ororo said, "They appeared quite comfortable with one another."

"And what does _EJ_ think about it?" Jean asked.

"I did not inquire, but he did not seem put out."

Jean sighed. "Well, that's good. I mean, I'm glad that it doesn't seem to be causing a problem with EJ."

"And you do not mind that he is seeing her?"

Jean's expression told the story: simple surprise. "No, of course not." She wasn't an actress, not when caught off-guard, and Ororo was inclined to believe her. "He needs this, Ro - a girl his own age. I might've hoped that he'd pick one who's less likely to cause tension, but I'm very glad that he has one. From everything I've heard about EJ, I like him. And if his sister is half as nice, she'll suit Scott."

Pushing away from the counter, Jean walked to the table near the back door and slid into a seat, then put her face in her hands. Quite suddenly, she felt like crying, and she heard the chair beside hers scrape out, then a squeak as Ororo seated herself. "What is wrong?" Ororo asked, moved by the open sorrow of this woman who so rarely seemed to lose control.

"I miss him," Jean whispered. "I didn't realize, until he stopped writing to me, how much I talked to him." Then she raised her face and wiped away smeared mascara. Automatic attention to the social mask. "Isn't that funny? He's not a med student, or a geneticist - didn't even understand half of what I do. But he listened to me. He really _listened_ to me. I'd thought that whatever else he felt, a part of him could like plain Jean Grey. But it was just a crush after all, wasn't it? And now he's gotten past it. He has a new girl, and all his friends are out there. I'm glad but, God, I'm_ jealous_. Can you believe it? I'm _jealous_."

Reaching over, Ororo gripped Jean's forearm. "I think that you do underestimate him." She genuinely hadn't realized how attached Jean was to Scott. "He has friends there, it is true. But he has friends here, as well, and he has not forgotten us. He did ask about you."

"He did?"

"Yes, he did."

Ororo was lying through her teeth, but she would see to it that Scott Summers resumed some kind of contact with Jean Grey.

* * *

><p>Rain arrived with the fall in Berkeley, and riding to and from school, Scott discovered the drawbacks of a distant apartment. But rain numbered among his worst problems, and for that, he was grateful. He knew his way around the school, his class load was manageable, he had friends who were aware of what he could do with his eyes - and liked him anyway - and he had a girl. For a few months, he enjoyed an Indian summer of youthful freedom. His great discovery, thanks to Clarice, was Redwood National Park. It became their retreat. Other couples had songs or restaurants. He and Clarie had a park. Even much later, after they broke up, Scott never lost his fondness for the place, and that fall, they frequently borrowed EJ's car to drive up for a day to wander among trees a thousand years old and higher than either could see. Once, they rented a tent to spend a weekend at Nickle Creek grounds. Clarice lost her virginity and Scott, amazingly, got within spitting distance of a black bear and her two cubs. They never forgot that weekend. And Scott decided that he just might be in love - real, true love - for the first time in his life.<p>

Previously, love, lust and infatuation had all run together in his experience until he hadn't believed there was any difference, yet now, it seemed clear to him. That he was obsessed with Clarice was certainly true; the picture of Jean that had sat on his desk for a year had been replaced by one of Clarie - replaced by several, in fact, tacked up here and there about his bedroom - and sometimes he would lean on his desk, chin resting on the backs of his hands, and stare at the photo until twenty minutes were lost, or half an hour. Fixated, obsessed, lovesick. In class, he eyed his watch, marking time until they'd be done for the day so he could see her again. Holding hands, they would talk for hours until they ran out of things to say, then found privacy for more physical pursuits. Yet even with the blood singing in his ears and lower body, mesmerized by the scent of her, what he most wanted was to make her happy. And that, he thought, was the difference. It wasn't about him. On the night when they passed that final boundary and he came inside her body for the first time, instead of in her hand or between her thighs, on that night, he understood what it meant to be vulnerable. Incapacitated by nerves and worried that he'd hurt her more than was inevitable, or that it wouldn't be perfect, he'd been unable to stay hard. True to his nature, he'd taken on more responsibility than was his share, but his performance anxiety had stemmed from awe (and terror) at the privilege of being first. So she'd kissed and rubbed him until he'd relaxed enough. And she hadn't laughed. After, they'd tucked their bodies together like spoons in a drawer, and he'd kissed her shoulder and the back of her neck. "I love you," he'd said into her ear, as soft as the wind in the sequoias above.

"Why?" she'd replied.

"Because I do. Because there's no one else like you. Because I can talk to you, and you listen. Because you're not scared of me." Because you didn't laugh at me - but he didn't say that.

She hadn't replied, just wiggled back closer against him and pulled his hand around to lace her fingers through his, making a patch-skin quilt. Finally, she said, "Do you care that I'm black and you're white?" They'd never talked about it before. It hadn't seemed important. There had been second glances at them, even at Berkeley, but she thought it had more to do with interest in the uncommon than any degree of disapproval. Even Mrs. Gale had come to accept her 'colored' renter as none too different from her white one. But here, now, Clarice had needed to ask the question and hear - just once - the answer she already knew.

"I like it," he'd said. And that, she hadn't expected. She'd expected him to say it didn't matter, so she'd twisted a bit until she could see his face.

"What do you mean?"

"I like dark skin. I always have."

Pushing herself up on an elbow, she'd looked down at him in the close dark of the tent, though she could barely see. The air had smelled heavy, still full of sex musk and sweat, and he'd been wearing his visor, as he often did when they lay together. "Really?" she'd asked.

"Really."

"You're not lying?"

"No - really. My first girlfriend was Mexican, then I dated an Indian-American named Anula Shah, another Mexican, and my last prom date was Chinese." He didn't mention Phoebe. "I've dated other people, of course, but if we're talking just plain _looks_, I kinda go for darker skin."

"What about red hair?" Clarice knew about Jean. Scott had told her. The telling had been part of his exorcism before moving on. "I thought you liked red hair."

He'd grinned; she could sense it more than see it. "I do. And I like dark skin. I didn't say it had to make _sense_."

And she'd relaxed back against him. "Think I should dye mine?"

"Christ, no! That would look just . . . weird." And he ran one of her braids through his fingers. "You don't care that I'm white? Or a mutant?"

She'd smiled and kissed him. "No. Not at all. I don't mind a little white bread."

And that was all they'd said about it, or had needed to say. There was, however, further discussion of the matter between Clarice and her brother. Scott remained blissfully unaware of some conversations that occurred when he was absent, including a tremendous row when Clarie had announced that she planned to spend the night with Scott in a tent among the redwoods. EJ and Scott themselves had never discussed that excursion, or discussed Scott's affair with her at all beyond one awkward exchange. Approximately one week after the cookout that had begun their formal liaison, while Scott was still feeling broadsided by the intensity of his emotions and also feeling the remnants of guilt over Phoebe, he'd walked into EJ's small room, standing just inside the doorway until EJ had looked up. Then staring fixedly at a point over EJ's shoulder (though with the glasses, the direction of his gaze was difficult to assess), he'd announced. "I'd rather die than hurt her, Eeej. I'd rather die. I just thought you should know." And he'd walked out again.

Whatever Scott had said - and EJ didn't doubt his sincerity - EJ still retained his concerns, and had brought them up to Clarice on more than one occasion. First, he thought Clarice (and Scott) too cavalier in their dismissal of the potential racial conflict. "He doesn't care if I'm black, and I don't care if he's white!" Clarice had yelled when he'd come to see her in her dorm room. Diane had been out, so it had been just to two of them. "I'd never have expected _you_ to doubt him!"

"I don't doubt him. The man is colorblind - figuratively, not just literally. But that don't mean it won't matter." In fact, EJ worried a great deal about his sister's attraction to Scott. The matter was more complex than mere pigmentation, and however biologically bogus race might be, it still existed at the cultural level, and the historical, and he thought a part of Clarice was ashamed at the darkness of her skin. From the time they'd been children, she'd held herself apart, refusing to adopt either the ebonics of her school-mates, or their epistemologies. By nature a serious girl, and introverted, her interest in hard science hadn't been acknowledged kindly in Black Town, where girls didn't save pennies for telescopes to seek the stars. That was a 'white' occupation, and EJ had heard kids at school sneer the word "oreo" in her hearing. Yet rather than fight against it, show them that interests weren't genetic, she'd embraced her rejection. Scott was, as EJ had said, colorblind. But he wasn't culturally blind, and EJ thought he'd fallen so hard for Clarie because she was a black white girl. And her attraction to him? EJ feared that, deep down, she was trying to shed her skin.

"We think alike," she said now. "We have the same values. The _church_ issue is going to be a bigger deal, Elijah."

"I know." He seated himself on her bed. "But out in the real world . . . you saw he was a little stiff sometimes, on our visit home last break. Not with us, but outside the house. I'm not saying it won't work. I'm just saying it worries me to see you two dismiss it like it don't matter none."

"Well, you two live together!"

"Yeah, but we ain't marrying each other. And we talk about the differences. It's not a taboo subject." He eyed his sister. "You two are getting serious, and getting serious fast."

Her chin went up. "Yes, we are."

"He ain't said the m-word, has he?"

"Quit being so cryptic. If you mean marriage, no, he hasn't. It's a little early for that."

He stood again. "There are still places in this country that wouldn't serve you two in a restaurant without you making a scene first - and not all of 'em are white-owned restaurants. He might be my brother but he's not _a_ brother, y'know? You shouldn't go into this with rose-colored glasses. People'll stare - "

"They stare now. But there's a difference between just looking and glaring."

EJ ignored her. "It'll be harder for you to find a place to live, and anytime you take him to an all-black function, he won't be completely comfortable. He might not even be welcome, like I said. It'll always be easier for you to adapt to his world than for him to adapt to yours."

"I know," she replied, frowning out a window. "Don't think I don't know."

But he still wondered, in a corner of his mind, if adapting to Scott's world wasn't the point? In truth, though, the racial issue had been the easiest for him to broach because it was the least significant. Scott and Clarice had more in common than different, just as was true for Scott and EJ. EJ's primary concerns remained the same ones he'd raised the previous spring: Scott's greater romantic experience, and his fascination with Jean Grey. EJ could now add concern over what had transpired between Scott and Phoebe that summer. Neither had been forthcoming, and as Scott had previously related almost everything to EJ, his sudden recalcitrance was troubling, especially when combined with Phoebe's equal reluctance to discuss it when he'd invited her to the cookout. "Something went sour between you two?" he'd asked, fishing. She'd replied, "You might say that. I'm coming to this for your sake, Eeej. Not for his."

Even now and despite the glasses, Summers was too adept with women; and because EJ knew how easily he could fall into the same slightly narcissistic trap himself, he fretted no end. Clarice adored Scott, and EJ feared what she might do to keep him. It wasn't just the near-certainty of sex, though his antiquated resistance to that idea surprised him. Yet were EJ honest with himself, he had to admit that if he could have picked a man to be his sister's first, Summers would've been his choice - Scott respected her - and he dismissed any intellectual dissonance this caused by the simple expedience of refusing to think about it. His real dread ran in a different direction.

EJ remembered too well Scott's devotion, all that previous year, to Jean Grey, yet now it was stone cold. All pictures of Jean had disappeared and the two never talked on the phone. Scott studiously avoided her name in conversation. Instead, he'd thrown himself into this affair with Clarice, and EJ was far from convinced that Scott was over Jean, feared that he was using Clarie to soothe his head-on collision with reality, even while Clarice was using him to escape her race. The fact that EJ kept his mouth shut owed to the fact that Scott and Clarice were - differences aside - a good match. What had started as one thing might transform into another. More, EJ loved Scott as much as his sister did, and had no wish to endanger that friendship - though if Scott did hurt Clarice, EJ would grant him no quarter. So he kept his doubts to himself, and if Scott sometimes suspected that his friend was less sanguine than he appeared, he bought into the 'don't ask, don't tell' policy.

It was early November when, prompted by Ororo, Scott finally resumed limited email contact with Jean, and they obliquely renegotiated the boundaries of what would and wouldn't be discussed. She talked about med school and her research; he complained about his classes. She didn't say much about Ted Roberts. He said almost nothing about Clarice Haight. Their notes became easier after the first few, but he no longer checked his email six times a day.

In mid-November, the weekend before Thanksgiving, Soapbox was hired to play yet another frat party. They performed at least every other weekend now, and their reputation was growing, having scored a few shows at prestigious bars and clubs, and a few more at mediocre ones, as well as these ubiquitous frat parties. This particular gig had begun like any other. They set up on the house's back deck under tiki torches and leftover orange Halloween pumpkin lights. It wasn't cold enough at night yet to prevent an outdoor party, and it wasn't raining. The house itself was old and large, white clapboard in need of fresh paint and slightly messy from a combination of party debris and the ill attention of its occupants. By eleven o'clock, as Soapbox closed their second set, most of the guests had arrived and had consumed enough beer to be rowdy, but not enough to descend into an alcoholic stupor.

When the band took a break, Lee ducked inside to find a restroom. As always, the guys kidded her that her bladder was the size of a pea, and accustomed to ignoring them, she entered through a rear door near the kitchen, found the trash bin overflowing and margarita mix spilled on a kitchen counter, now overrun by black ants. The first floor bathroom was occupied already, and there was a line - three girls waiting and smoking outside - so she headed upstairs, disinclined to exchange meaningless banter with drunk Barbie look-alikes. At the foot of the stairs, a boy and girl were hanging all over each other, and annoyed, she pushed past them. Two stairs squeaked, and one was cracked. Upstairs, there was giggling behind closed doors and the distinct, sweet odor of marijuana. The bathroom was occupied here, too, but there wasn't a line, so she folded her arms over her chest, leaned into a wall, and studied generic seaside prints while she waited, trying not to listen in on the sexual tryst in the bedroom behind her. It sounded as if there were at least three people in there, which amused her in a condescending way. Lee had always prided herself on her detachment from such things. If she harbored no objection to sex, she wanted it on her terms, and could usually take it or leave it, subconsciously resenting the loss of control required to enjoy it. She was slightly prudish in her sexual emancipation.

What followed next occurred in cinematic slow motion for Lee, even if later, she had difficulty sorting it out. The door to the restroom opened at the same time as the door to the bedroom with the (at least) three-person orgy. One boy stepped out of the bathroom, and another boy from the bedroom, his pants still unzipped and halfway down. Lee moved for the bathroom, but the second boy pushed past as if he hadn't seen her. "Hey," she snarled, "I was waiting, you jerk."

He was too drunk, or too high, or both, to think of consequences, and grabbed her by the hair, shoving her up against the doorframe to snarl back, "Shut up, bitch."

Spittle flew and she flinched. "God! Get out of my face! You're _disgusting_."

"Fuck you!" And then his mouth was on hers and he'd yanked her inside the doorway, one hand squeezing her breast right through her shirt. Her first reaction was mental shock, followed by violent loathing, and she shoved him backwards. Off balance, and with his pants half-down and tangling his legs, he tripped over the toilet and fell into the tub. He looked ridiculous, with legs sticking straight up in the air and his butt bared. She laughed. It wasn't wise.

Scrambling up, he got hold of her arm and yanked her sideways into a bathroom wall so that her head connected with a towel rack, almost knocking her out. Gasping, she dropped to her knees, pain white behind her eyelids. She'd bitten her tongue as well, and tasted blood, salty-sharp. Still furious, her assailant slugged her in the jaw, calling her every nasty name that crossed his besotted mind. Despite her pain, or because of it, she reacted with all the anger against the male of the species that she usually kept bottled. Grabbing the plunger, she laid about with it like an armed Valkyrie and screamed in rage. The ruckus brought more frat brothers and their dates out of bedrooms to witness the spectacle, and also brought her bandmates up from the yard below.

EJ heard her yelling first - Scott was off with Rick, getting extra duct tape out of Lee's van to replace what had torn off cables - and her howled obscenities sent EJ crashing through the back door, into the house, and up the stairs. He found her fighting with all her might against five boys. There was blood on her face and her top was torn, bearing half her beige bra. Unsure what had happened but fearing the worst, EJ leapt into the fray with nine years of training in Isshin-Ryu karate. He became a whirling mass of hands and feet in the close hall space as he tried to avoid friendly fire from a furious Lee with her plunger. But he hadn't counted on facing a frat brother far above his own fighting skill. If Asian ancestry didn't automatically grant expertise in martial arts, this time it did, and though EJ had been training since ten, this boy was the son of a temple master in San Francisco and had begun Shaolin Kung-Fu at his father's knee as soon as he could toddle. He may have drunk too much, but almost before EJ could register it, the boy had flung EJ into a wall, cracking the plaster. "Don't mess with us, nigger boy!" the other howled. "Don't mess with us or I'll kick that ugly black ass back into the shit hole it crawled out of."

At that moment, Rick tore up the steps with Scott behind, and Clarice behind Scott, despite being told to stay outside. Seeing her brother sent flying, she tried to push past, but Scott hauled her back, almost knocking her down the stairs in the process. "Stay out of this!" Meanwhile Rick, infuriated by the racial slurs, had unwisely jumped on the kung-fu expert's back. The other boy just slammed himself into a wall, crushing Rick in the process and dropping him to the floor with a pained grunt. Immediately, one of the watching girls kicked him in the ribs. "Ugly nigger!" she hissed. "Ugly, fat-lipped nigger!" Rolling and grabbing her foot, Rick yanked her off balance but that only brought down the wrath of her friends. There were too many of them, Scott noted with cool detachment - thirteen to four, not counting Clarice. An astonished EJ had climbed to his feet again, but was ringed about and cautious in his re-engagement. Lee had been pinned by the boy with his pants down and one other, her plunger taken away, and the slightly built Rick was simply overwhelmed.

Scott's options clicked through his mind as if it were a math problem to be solved, and the world fractured into a mosaic of individual movements, like so many stones building a picture. Blood beat in his temples, and his vision ran until it coagulated into eagle clarity. The touch of Mars, or maybe Minerva. One arm still holding back Clarice, he calculated distances and triggered his visor. He'd grabbed it from the van when he and Rick had run for the house, and now, narrowing his eyes, he opened the lens and blinked rapidly, shooting bolts rather than a single beam. They knocked chunks from the wooden floor between EJ and his nemesis, then did the same alongside the boys holding Lee, and finally, near the small huddle kicking Rick.

It had taken six seconds from analysis to action.

Screaming, people leapt out of the away or fled into rooms and slammed doors shut. Even his friends were startled, though they'd seen him use the beams before.

But not like this. Never offensively.

"Get back," he said in a voice just slightly above normal, flat with casual authority. Except for a little sobbing, the entire upstairs had gone dead quiet. Outside, the radio could be heard, and the voices of others, asking what was going on. "Back away from my friends." He felt no fear. He felt nothing at all, in fact, as if the emotional side of his nature had been shut tight behind the door of necessity.

EJ recovered the quickest and moved to assist Lee, where she'd been dropped to the floor by the boys who'd been holding her, when they'd fled. Rick pulled himself up the wall, one arm gripping his ribcage, his dark skin gray from pain. Four boys remained facing them, among them EJ's nemesis. "What in hell was that?" he demanded, though the other three kept their distance. Competence in self-defense made him cocky, and he stepped forward - an open challenge. Scott triggered his visor once more, the beam blade-thin and set at low impact. It still cut a line in the floor at the other boy's feet. "Shit!" the boy screamed, blundering backwards and knocking over a telephone table that had heretofore miraculously escaped destruction. It went over with a crash, the phone ringer clanging as it fell and the receiver bouncing free so that the dial tone hummed loudly. "What _are_ you, you nigger-loving motherfucker?" he asked.

"Kill the n-word," Scott snapped, "or I'll drive a beam right through your bigoted balls."

"Try it," the boy retorted, but he didn't come any closer.

Jaw tensing, all the emotions he'd smothered came flooding back and Scott might have made good on his threat, but in the instant before he could fire, Clarice's hand clamped down on his wrist. "He's not worth it," she whispered in his ear, speaking fast, terrified of what he might do. "Please, Scott. Please don't, please don't. He's not worth it."

She was right. "Guys," he said, "go pack up. We're done here."

"The hell you're done! You're not going to just walk away from this!" the aggressive one yelled, but he came no closer as EJ assisted Lee and Rick to the stairs, moving past Scott. "Look what you did to our house!"

"Look what you did to my friends," Scott replied, voice still deadly even. "If we press this, you could get your charter revoked. I remember reading in the _Daily Cal_ last year accusations of date rape made against this same frat. I think you're already walking a thin line, aren't you?" And Scott began to back down the stairs. He could feel Clarice's hand at his elbow, guiding him. He didn't turn his back on the boys and didn't remove his hand from his visor. Downstairs, people gave the five of them a wide berth. If they hadn't witnessed Scott's display, they'd certainly heard the shouting and could see the blood on Lee, and EJ. Some disappeared out the front door, beating a retreat before cops could arrive. That suited Scott just fine.

They made it out the back door, and he stood guard while EJ and Clarice packed equipment. Lee leaned against the deck rail, arms wrapped around herself, cursing under her breath. Despite the blood on her face and her torn shirt, Scott didn't think her badly injured. Rick, however, breathed heavily through his mouth and was growing more pallid as time passed. "Broken ribs?" Scott asked him softly, and he nodded.

"I think so. God, it hurts."

"We need to get you to a hospital."

Rick just nodded in agreement, and Scott returned his attention to watching. The uncanny cool had descended on him again and he felt nothing - not fear, not rage, not anxiety, nothing. The lawn was now empty, a few tiki torches burned out and fallen onto the grass, plastic cups dropped haphazardly as guests had fled. Apparently, curiosity had warred with discretion and discretion had won. Only the frat brothers and a few girlfriends remained on the premises, but they were staying in the house, observing from windows and calling out insults.

Experience made their set breakdown fast, although 'fast' was relative - it still took them twenty minutes - nonetheless, they were nearly done before the frat house president emerged from a rear door, backed up by the martial arts expert. The president's expression was belligerent and haughty, not conciliatory, and Scott placed himself between the two of them and his friends. "What do you want?"

"You don't press charges and we won't," the president said without preamble.

"I think we have a pretty clear case of self-defense," Scott replied, unwilling simply to back down.

But the president's eyes had gone sly, and he tilted his head. "Yeah, maybe. But do you want to explain to the cops how you cut holes in our hallway floor?"

Coming up behind Scott, EJ set a hand on his shoulder. "We're done, man. Let's get the fuck out of here."

"They _owe_ us, EJ - "

"Drop it. Come on." And he got a fistful of Scott's sweater, tugging. Perforce, Scott had to follow, but refused to turn his back until they'd reached the van. Clarice already had the engine running, and EJ pulled Scott inside, sliding the big door shut. The van lurched away.

It all hit him in a delayed reaction then, and he began to shake, dropping down in the van's rear to lean against Lee's big bass drum case. "Shit, shit, shit," he muttered. Rick was lying across the van's one remaining rear seat with Lee in the front, beside Clarice. EJ had crashed next to Scott.

No one spoke for several blocks, then EJ said, "Rick needs a hospital,"

"I'm already headed there," Clarice replied.

When they reached the emergency room parking lot, EJ helped Rick out of the van without too much jostling. Glasses back on, Scott assisted, feeling guilty the whole time. If he hadn't used the beams, they could've called in the cops and forced the fraternity to pay Rick's medical bill. As things stood, it had to go on Rick's insurance. "I'll pay for this," Scott blurted as they reached the red-striped doors that whooshed open for them.

EJ and Rick both gave him a baffled look. "Why, man?" Rick asked. "I got insurance!"

"I know. But it's my fault. The frat should've paid, and it's my fault we can't make them." Scott touched his damning glasses.

Inside the doors, Rick halted to lean up against a wall. His own glasses had somehow escaped damage, and now he peered at Scott from behind them. "This ain't your fault, man. I jumped a guy I shouldn't have."

"But if not for me, we could've called the cops - "

"Yo, right!" EJ and Rick both said together.

"They attacked Lee!" Scott protested. "And they already have a reputation!"

"Yeah, they do. But you gotta remember the score here," EJ pointed out. "They're the clean-cut sons of CPAs, CEOs, and VPs. We're a freakin' band with two brothers, a chick for a drummer, and you. The cops'd make certain assumptions."

Scott blinked. "But Rick's dad manages a bank! And you're a PK!"

"So? We're _black_."

"What the fuck does that matter?" Scott shouted, drawing attention from others in ER.

"Don't be dense," Rick said, voice tight and low. "If you hadn't had the beams, they'd have handed us our asses even _with_ EJ on our side, then dumped us in the van with threats to do it again if we squealed. Now, they're not sure what to make of you, and they've calmed down enough to remember that I'm a Nupe. They touch me again, and I got brothers who'll kick their straight white teeth down their prissy white throats. We were damn lucky. Now shut up and get me into ER. It's thanks to you that I wasn't brought in by ambulance."

So Scott and EJ obliged, and if Scott doubted that the police would've been as automatically biased as EJ claimed, he nonetheless had to acknowledge the basic logic behind what Rick had said. If not for him, things could have gone much worse, and they wouldn't have been in any shape to call the police or lodge charges.

It struck him finally that he'd _saved_ them all tonight, saved even EJ, whom he usually considered better able to protect himself than Scott was. He, Scott Summers, mutant, had saved his friends by the power of his own mutancy.

Christ, what a _gas_.

A triage nurse deemed Rick's injury non-life-threatening, and he was consigned to a waiting room until he could be seen by one of the residents. Waiting with him, it dawned on Scott that neither Clarice nor Lee had come inside yet. "I'll go check on the girls," he told the other two, and slipped out, making his way back down the hall and escaping into the dark of the parking lot. It was now after midnight and clouds had boiled in from the west, obscuring the moon. Lee's van was still there, so they hadn't gone anywhere else. Hands shoved into his pockets against the cold, he jogged across asphalt to peer in the front window. No one was there and the door was locked when he tried it. Deciding that they must have gone into the hospital after all, he'd turned back towards the ER when the side door slid open and Clarice's head popped out. "I thought it was you," she said. Her face appeared both strained and vaguely eerie in the yellow light of a street lamp.

Turning back, he kissed her quickly. "You okay? They decided Rick isn't likely to die on them, so they're making him wait. It could be a while. You may as well come in."

Clarice glanced back into the dark of the van and Scott could hear faint sniffles now. Worried, he tried to see past her, but she blocked his view until Lee's voice - very rough - said, "It's okay. Let him in." So Clarie moved aside and he climbed into the van, made his way over to sit down beside Lee, whose face was puffy from heavy crying. Her fair skin glowed ghostlike in the dark, but there was still blood on it, and dark bruises now. He put an arm around her, hugged her to him just because he didn't know what else to do. She accepted it, hugging him back. She was shaking, and it alarmed him to find self-sufficient Lee Forrester near breakdown. He could hear Clarice's breath behind them, and the grating sound of the door slamming shut again.

"What'd they do to you, Lee-Lee?" he asked finally, almost afraid to hear the answer.

Pulling back, she wiped her running nose. "Not what you think, so quit fretting."

"Well, his _pants_ were down - "

She burst into almost hysteric giggles, as did Clarice behind her. "That wasn't because of me."

"Lee said he came out of a room where there were at least three of them in there, going at it. He just hadn't buttoned up his fly yet."

In other circumstances, he might have laughed, too. But not here. "Lee - "

"Really, Scott. I just got in his way. He did try to kiss me, but just to piss me off. I made him mad and he hit me and that's how it started - and all it was. He was drunk; I was furious. I'm just . . . a little freaked out, is all. It brought back some bad memories. I'll be okay."

Scott considered that, and sat down cross-legged on the van floor in front of her, gripping her hands in his. He was aware of Clarice at his back, like a bulwark. "You want to talk?" he asked.

"Not really. Did that already."

Should he press, he wondered? But for what purpose? Just to satisfy his own prurient interest? He was no counselor, and Clarice had been here for Lee. Like her brother, Clarie had a quietude of soul that acted as a balm, and Lee had no close girlfriends. Perhaps she needed one. But what she needed most from him was simple acceptance without fanfare. So he asked, "You want some coffee? They have it in the ER. We should probably get your face cleaned up, too. You're going to have one helluva shiner by tomorrow, y'know?"

"More like two of them," Clarice said from behind him. "A matched set."

Smiling at that, Lee let them raise her to her feet, one on either side, and lead her into the ER.

* * *

><p>As Scott and Clarice hadn't spent more than a weekend apart since they'd begun dating - he'd even gone home with her for Thanksgiving - the looming separation at Christmas haunted them both. Finals demanded their attention, but they otherwise breathed one another like swimmers gulping oxygen before a deep dive. Seven days before Christmas, Warren flew out with Frank to pick up Scott, and Scott then flew them all back, Warren watching with approval from the co-pilot seat. "You've picked this up fast, Gamma Gaze," he said.<p>

"Runs in the family, I guess," Scott replied, making light of it, but he and Warren both shared a love of the clouds, so he felt no need to explain further. "So how are things at the mansion?" Deliberately general, the question could be answered in whatever way the other two took it.

"I am graduated!" Frank crowed, and twisting, Scott offered a hand over his shoulder to shake.

"Hank's newest experiment, whatever it is, smells _foul_," Warren added, "and Ro's learned to manipulate air currents so she can float."

"_Really?_"

"Yeah. She can't go fast, or move anybody else - she dumped Frank on the lawn - "

"That hurt!"

" - but she can raise herself."

"_Cool. _I never even considered that she could use her powers to _fly_."

"None of us did. She figured it out by accident, I think. But you know Ro, she won't show off anything until she has it down." Scott grunted in agreement, though he understood the sentiment. "Frank here has been working at using Cerebro, but it still makes him sicker than a dog."

"I do not think this will change. It is the nature of having the power accelerated so far."

"Maybe you should stick to running the obstacle course Hank laid out."

"Ugh." Frank's expression, seen faintly reflected in the cockpit window, made Scott grin. "Tell him about the new construction," Frank prompted, to change the subject.

"Oh, yeah. Well, the big news is that Reed Richards has been up at the mansion every weekend since November. He and the professor are building something in the sub-basement, but they won't tell us what. They sealed off a whole corridor, and Xavier brought in contractors. Ro asked the guys some questions, and they think they're building a gym."

"But you don't."

"He's mucking around in minds again. I know that's how he got the whole sub-basement built in the first place, but still . . ." Warren trailed off, frowning, then asked, "Do you two ever worry that, y'know, you may not be thinking your own thoughts?"

Scott pondered this while eyeing instrument readings. Everything was running on level. "No," he said. "I mean, I did at first - when I first got to the mansion. Now? No, never. I trust him."

"_Si_," Frank agreed. "I think I would know otherwise." And he smiled.

"So when will we find out what they're up to?" Scott asked.

"Christmas Day," Frank and Warren replied in unison.

They fell silent, and Scott finally decided that he'd have to go fishing. "How's Jean?"

Warren glanced over. "I thought you had a girl?"

Annoyed, Scott breathed out heavily. "That doesn't mean I don't want to know if Jean's okay." He paused, added, "I'd like to be friends again but . . . I don't know. I'm afraid we've lost that."

"You hurt her feelings, Scott," Frank said quietly from the seat behind, "not to invite her to your party. Henry did take it better than Jean did."

"Ro already chewed me out, thank you very much. And I wasn't ready to see her, then."

"And now?"

Scott shrugged. "It's different. I've got Clarice." A pause. "I think I'm in love with her."

Both Warren and Frank sat straight up, Warren's wings fanning out in astonishment. "Whoa - say what?"

Scott grinned. "I think I'm in love with her."

"For real?"

"Yeah, for real."

"You thought you were in love with Jean."

"No, I had a _crush_ on Jean. This is different." A hesitation. "But is she happy? Jean, I mean. Her last letter seemed kind of _flat_. It worried me, but there are things we just don't talk about anymore."

"Ted Roberts is one of them," Frank said. It wasn't a question.

Warren raised a hand to show thumb and forefinger an inch apart. "They're this close to splitting. She makes us answer the phone, in case it's him, and sometimes pretends she's not there."

Scott didn't know how he felt about that. Honesty demanded that he admit to a small, gleeful vindication, but it saddened him more. "He's not being good to her?"

"I don't think it's that. I don't know what it is. She's not talking to us." Warren glanced sideways. "She might talk to you, though. If you asked."

"And she might not."

"She will," Frank said with a finality of which only he was capable.

But Scott had no chance to talk with Jean, and there were no white-lit Christmas deer on the lawn waiting to greet him. Jean was off visiting her sister, and was to head directly home after that so she could return on Christmas for the professor's surprise. Hank was gone as well, and the four younger students spent their time playing poker, working out in the gym, building snow creatures on the lawn, or simply gossiping. Each time he returned to Westchester, Scott grew more conflicted, uncertain as to where he belonged. Here, with others born like him? Or back in Berkeley, with others who thought like him? California was home; he'd lived there since starting high school, and to a military brat, that constituted a long time. Moreover, he had friends there again, and it felt increasingly like a different existence, one integrated, instead of isolated. Yet the people here were his chosen family, and he owed the professor so much. There was also the matter of Frank's visions, whatever they might mean. If he believed in Frank's gift with the closest thing he had to faith, that faith wasn't hard reality, and the notion that his optic blasts could be anything other than a dangerous nuisance hadn't really penetrated until he'd saved his friends a month ago. Now, he reveled in the new recognition that his power could be used to protect, not to harm, and maybe there was something to Frank's prophecy after all.

On Christmas Eve, Frank was visited around mid-afternoon by a powerful premonition. He and Scott were wrapping last minute presents on the floor of Frank's room, while Scott chatted with Clarice by phone. Frank suddenly grabbed his head and fell forward like a stunned bull. Mostly his visions struck in his sleep, but the very strong, or the very imminent, might hit him while he was awake. Hanging up on Clarice with a stuttered explanation, Scott knelt beside him, waiting for the vision to pass. For long moments, there was only Frank's harsh breathing, then he stirred and raised his head from his hands, looked at Scott. "Fire and ice," he said. "I see fire and ice, and a mutant boy in danger at a church. And steel mills."

But whatever was to come, it hadn't happened yet. The professor descended to the sub-basement to scan periodically using Cerebro. Just around dusk, he finally located a mutant's distinctive mental spike in Allentown, Pennsylvania. It was a drive of several hours, or a flight of less than one, so they headed for Warren's jet and landed at the local Allentown airport in twenty-five minutes; renting a car took another fifteen.

The closer they drew to the mutant's signature, the more obvious it was that a local disturbance was underway. In the end, they couldn't get within more than a few blocks. The police had the area cordoned off, and they could hear sirens in the distance, see the glow of a fire against the night sky. Parking the rental haphazardly on a curb, they stopped to confer. "Warren, Scott, I want you to move in rapidly," the professor instructed. "Ororo can wheel me closer but it will take more time. Frank, stay with the car."

It was, Scott thought, a handy way of keeping their weakest link out of trouble, and now that they were here, they needed his powers the least. A pragmatist, Frank made no protest.

Grabbing his visor and tossing the keys to Frank, Scott, with Warren in tow, raced off in the direction of the racket. Although traffic had been stopped, there were simply too many people about and in the dark, it was easy to slip past the blockade by the simple expedient of ducking through backyards and over fences. The houses here had been built in the post-war boom of the late forties and early fifties, all northeastern clapboard square frames with yards the size of postage stamps and constructed closely enough together that a tall man could stand with arms extended and touch the house to either side of him. A few had back porch lights switched on, and once, the two boys were chased by a yapping cocker spaniel.

The heart of the disturbance appeared to be a local church lawn - as Frank had foreseen. "Trinity Presbyterian" read the brick marquis. Vaulting over a final chain-link fence, Scott and Warren stumbled to an awed halt.

The entire lawn had been transformed into a frozen confection like a life-sized ice sculpture, and at the center rose a great, decorated cedar, lighted still from within its glittering shell. Behind roared hell. If the lawn was frozen, the church itself was on fire, flames licking up into black night and sparking gold and red off the glassy-ice.

Against this backdrop, firemen sprayed water from hoses and people ran shouting to and fro. Some flung rocks or trash or whatever came to hand, but not at the firemen. The center of the maelstrom was a boy and a girl. He'd pushed her to the ground and now attempted to cover her with his own body. They might have been screaming, but with the general uproar, no one could tell, and even as Scott and Warren watched, the girl clawed her way out from under her protector to race away into the crowd.

No one flung things at her. But the missile flotsam continued assaulting the boy, who had his arms wrapped protectively over his head. "Monster!" people were yelling. "Freak!" "Devil!"

Scott was reminded of the frat house, but he felt no anger. As before, he felt nothing at all, his mind having slammed itself into that same strange state of which in all his life, he would never learn to make an adequate description. It was the difference between a muggy day and the clarity after rain. Time dragged, he could count his own breaths, and his body tingled with blood rush. Freed of mortal restraints, he doubted nothing in himself. Instead, he catalogued everything around him: the angry mob bent on a modern stoning in this season of redemption, the police trying vainly to restrain them, the firefighters attempting to subdue the blaze . . . and the boy huddled all alone like an infant in an icy creche.

"Warren, get your jacket and shirt off. It's time to stage our own little Annunciation."

To his credit, Warren offered no protest, just doffed his clothing as Scott had instructed. "What? You want me to fly down and pick him up?"

"Exactly."

"Jesus Christ! All I need's a flaming sword! Where should I take him?"

"Back to the plane, if you can get that far. If not, land somewhere. The professor can find you."

"What if the police decide to _shoot_ at me? Real archangels don't bleed. _I _do."

"I've got your back. You concentrate on getting that kid out of there; let me handle the police, if it's necessary."

"God, I hope it's not." And Warren handed over jacket, shirt and wing rack, then stretched out white feathers in the shadow of a backyard shed and launched himself into the air, spiraling fast - too fast, Scott hoped, for anyone to see him go up.

Gripping Warren's discarded apparel, Scott edged his way closer to the crowd, one hand hovering halfway to his visor. He was watching the police, but busy with the mob, they weren't watching the sky.

Warren came down, wings beating in slow strokes, gilded by the fire's light. The crowd noise died away and people stood with mouths agape. Scott's own gaze flicked from Warren to the mob, to the police, who'd turned now, to see what had stunned the many-headed beast into complacency.

Except for the sirens, the crack of the fire, and the hiss of rushing water, it was eerily silent.

Touching down beside the frightened boy, wings still extended protectively, Warren got hands under the boy's armpits and hauled him up. If they said anything, Scott couldn't tell. People were still frozen as stiff as the icy lawn, and none of the police drew a firearm.

Lifting the boy with easy mutant strength, wings beating hard, Warren rose up into the night, high as a star, and then disappeared.

For a long moment, no one moved. Finally, the flood of astonishment broke free and people babbled like geese. Turning, Scott looked about for the professor, spotting him with Ororo at a distance, even as he heard a woman beside him cry out, "God save us, it was an angel! An angel rescued that boy!"

* * *

><p><strong>Notes:<strong> Dedicated with love and fondness to my friend Jamie, who took a degree in electrical engineering back when girls weren't supposed to do that kind of thing, especially if they were black. Yes, I know the comic put Bobby's hometown in Fort Washington, Long Island, and _X2_ puts him him Boston. I'm changing it. It's a minor point.


	11. Little Earthquakes

At twelve, Bobby Drake had only begun to consider the direction his life might take, and whether he could escape the dead-end accountant's job that his father had held with Pennsylvania Power and Light for almost fifteen years. He was a bright boy, but academically lazy because the things he valued most - friendship and enjoyment of life - didn't combine to produce ambition. Thus, he was thought slightly below average intellectually, when in truth, he scored a little above. Had he been spared the X-gene, he would have become popular in high school for his good-natured humor and good looks, and a very real kindness of spirit. In college, he'd have joined a fraternity and taken a degree in business, then have married a nice girl and moved to a town a little bigger than the one in which he'd grown up, saved for a house in the suburbs, an SUV, and a dog. He'd have brought his wife roses on Valentine's Day, played ball with his son, and grilled out on Saturdays, laughing with friends over a few beers and a ballgame. And he would have been content with that pedestrian destiny because watching his parents close themselves off in bitter disappointment at having less than their neighbors had convinced him that ambition was a demon that ate the heart from the inside out. Perhaps that made him wiser than most.

But fate had rewarded him with a cryogenic mutation as powerful as Scott Summers' optic blasts. When he eventually learned to master his power, he was able to produce near absolute zero temperatures, freeze-dry any matter containing moisture, and crystalize the water in his own body to create an ice form. But at the outset, all he could do was freeze vaporized water in the air around him. Nonetheless, the extent of his transformational reach was stunning, as the frozen church lawn had demonstrated.

That kind of power was the last thing he would have wanted.

The professor and his weary students didn't make it back to Westchester until the wee hours of Christmas morning, bringing a haunted, bewildered Bobby Drake with them. For the entire trip, he'd sat stone-faced in the plane cabin, staring at nothing. "He is in the shock," Frank had said, sitting beside the boy and chafing his cold, trembling hands. None of them had realized then that cold hands were normal for Bobby.

The professor had been equally dazed after exhausting himself in obscuring the memories of an entire city suburb, a task made doubly difficult by the presence of live-action camera crews. Fortunately, most of the damning events had occurred before the cameras had arrived, and only Warren's descent had needed concealing. Although the cameras may not have had minds to control, the cameramen wielding them had, and they'd been convinced that the tree in their focus was the miraculous angel they were supposed to be filming. Such manipulations were costly, however, both physically and ethically, and Xavier had disliked performing them. Yet something had been necessary. Even Scott's prom manifestation incident hadn't had so high a profile.

When they got back, the students put the professor to bed, then kept watch over a traumatized Bobby. The boy was docile, but refused food and even water. The only thing he would say was, "It's my fault." Curling up in a fetal position on a spare bed, and smearing soot on the sheets, he fell asleep. Hank got back to the mansion around noon, and took up guard, releasing Ororo, but it wasn't until early afternoon that Xavier himself woke and could relate to the rest of them what had occurred at the church before their arrival, information gleaned from Bobby's own memories. The conflagration had not, in fact, been Bobby's fault, but he'd been involved in the incident that had begun it, and three people had died. It was a terrible thing for a twelve-year-old to bear.

As in many protestant churches across the nation, a Christmas Eve Candlelight hymn-sing had been a yearly tradition at Salisbury Trinity Presbyterian, with services beginning at seven in the evening and concluding just after eight with the lighting of small, white, hand-held candles as the congregation warbled "Silent Night." Still singing, they'd exit the sanctuary to ring the great, lighted cedar on the front lawn. Sentimental and picturesque, the service's popularity had outweighed its inherent danger. Fire extinguishers were always kept on hand and the usual warnings given, but Reverend Ricky Douglas had worried for years about the hazard of putting burning candles into the hands of young children, elderly adults, and rowdy teenaged boys.

That Christmas Eve, the worst that could happen did happen.

The adolescent members of the church youth group typically took up the first two lefthand pews, directly before the pulpit. Prominence had made them feel special, and also (usually) had made them behave. But that night, sitting in front had also meant they were among the last to file out, and Rev. Douglas had already been on the lawn. Freed from the watchful supervision of parents or pastor, two of the boys had leaned over the pew in front to wave their candles menacingly near the hair of Marissa Johnston, a pretty but timid seventh grader, and Bobby Drake's new girlfriend. The boys were sophomores in high school and cocky with that; they had called Drake a nancy-boy where Rev. Douglas couldn't hear, and teased Marissa mercilessly. The night of the fire, Drake had finally lost his patience and fought back, shoving away the arm of one boy so that the candle swiped too close to the hair of the boy's own girlfriend, Jenny Schmidt. She'd spent half an hour before service, curling and re-curling her hair, and teasing bangs until they stood three inches straight up - then spraying it all within an inch of its life.

Fire and hairspray had made a deadly combination, and her hair had caught like a torch. Slapping at her head and screaming, she'd plowed past the legs of the girl beside her to escape out into the center aisle . . . away from the fire extinguishers and into the line of others bearing candles, knocking them into each other, or causing them to drop candles on the carpet. One man, thinking to put out the fire on Jenny's head, had yanked down a Christmas banner. Unfortunately, it was made of brightly-dyed rayon, and had gone up in a brilliant flame, causing the would-be rescuer to drop it on a pew and set the padding ablaze while Jenny had blundered away, screaming and waving her arms as fire had traveled down her body, cooking her flesh. Though several people had grabbed fire extinguishers by that point, the crush of frightened parishioners had kept the self-appointed fire fighters from getting to the girl - or the flames - before they were out of control.

Bobby Drake had been no less frightened than the rest, and had fled the church sanctuary hand in hand with Marissa. His whole body had gone cold, despite the heat - cold with terror. Outside, he'd stood shaking amid the crowd as they'd all watched their church burn, and neighbors had come running with impossibly small buckets of water and garden hoses. The sound of fire engines and police had pealed down the streets of Allentown, covering cries from inside the church. Poor Jenny Schmidt had already died, but Mrs. Olivia Hunter had not. Eighty-three-years-old and confined to a walker, she'd been left behind when the rest had evacuated, only her eldest daughter remaining with her in a desperate attempt to pull her to safety despite the handicap of arthritis. It wasn't until the sirens had stopped that the people outside could hear the cries of Olivia's daughter Ruth. Then a few brave souls had attempted a rescue, but impossible heat had driven them back until firemen in their flame-resistant gear and had run up to take their place.

Hearing the shouts of the women, and overcome by the horror of having witnessed Jenny's death, Bobby's shaking had grown worse until he'd felt a yanking twist inside, and had closed his eyes. Shouts of surprise had made him open them again almost immediately. The firemen were sliding and falling on an ice-covered sidewalk. Like everyone else, he'd stared around in confusion while the firemen had made it onto the grass, still covered by patches of old snow - but no ice. Yet the few moments of delay had cost them, and they couldn't get far enough into the building to save the women. The church's 1960s-chic wooden architecture had offered too much fuel, and flames had roared heavenward despite jets of pressurized water from the fire hoses. Even a hundred feet away behind yellow police tape, Bobby had felt the heat on his skin. But it hadn't warmed him. Instead, the icy cold had lodged in his very bones until he'd stopped shaking. Frozen stiff. When Marissa had touched him, she'd gasped in shock. "You're an icicle!"

That was when he'd troubled to glance down, and had noticed that the iced sidewalk had stopped at his own feet. Reflected flame had danced in it, hypnotizing him. Ice, ice . . . fire and ice. Primal opposites. He'd closed his eyes and thought about ice. Thought about fire killed by ice.

But his power was new and he couldn't bend it to his will; instead, it had traveled the path of least resistance out towards the December lawn behind him, not the inferno before him. Ice had crept across grass, trees, and the parking lot with its cars while the crowd of watchers had drawn back in shock. Only Bobby, and Marissa with him, had remained at the center. "Stop it, stop it, stop it!" Marissa had screamed, even as the crowd recovered itself, coming awake like a wild beast, frightened and angry, to fling curses and whatever had come to hand - half-burnt candles and shoes, mostly. The police hadn't helped much. Having no idea how to contain Drake, they'd focused on containing the crowd instead. But if not for the timely arrival of Scott and Warren, Bobby would have been stoned like Stephen in Jerusalem.

After the professor had finished relating the story, he and Hank went to check on the new boy while the other students drifted off to cope, in their own ways, with what they'd heard. None had suffered an easy manifestation experience, and Bobby's had brought back unpleasant memories. Scott Summers had additional matters to ponder, and as he always did his best thinking when his hands were busy, he took himself up to a third-floor closet in search of Jean's Christmas deer. He'd meant to set them up yesterday, but had never gotten around to it. Finding the boxes in a corner, he made four trips, carrying them down and out onto the lawn where she'd had them last year. He meant them as a peace offering, and hoped she'd understand the message. He'd been thinking about what Frank had told him on the flight back: that he'd hurt her feelings. But it would have been worse, he thought, to have seen her again before he was ready. Now, he was ready, and he did want their friendship back. He had things he wanted to discuss with her - what had happened at the frat house, and what had happened at the rescue of the new boy - and she'd always given him good advice. He'd also pondered Frank's assertion that she might be willing to tell him about whatever was wrong in her current relationship. It was time for them to get past the taboo topics of Ted and Clarice.

Jean was expected to return "sometime before dark," and he hoped he could get all the deer in place before she showed up. Fortunately, it wasn't rocket science, or even complex variables, though the cold numbed his fingers so that he kept fumbling the assembly. He alternately swore at the frame deer and sang Christmas carols to himself, his breath white in the frigid air. There was a little snow on the lawn, and more came down in a light dusting as he worked, making lacy doilies on the dirt of the drive.

Here at the dead of winter, the sun was already sitting on the horizon before he was done plugging in the lights. Behind him, he heard a car rumbling down the drive. "In the nick of time," he muttered, raising up to watch Jean's Toyota approach, and - suddenly struck by inspiration - he jogged forward to meet her. Seeing him, she slowed, and grinning to himself as he reached the side of her car, he pretended to trip, slapping the left front fender as if he'd hit it, then fell down moaning on the grass beside the road. As she had a year and a half earlier, she slammed on the breaks and leapt out, yelling, "Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Are you okay?"

Laughing, he sat up. "Gotcha!"

She pulled off her little white-knit beret to beat him about the head with it, yelling, "You bastard!" which only made him laugh harder, even while trying to shield himself from her fury. Jean Grey possessed an amazing temper, though she rarely permitted it to show. Nice girls didn't get angry. But if startled into expressing herself, she did so with remarkable pugilism. She'd given him bruises before. Now, he just lay back in the faint print of new snow beside the road and fended her off, giggling until she gave up on her anger and laughed with him.

Finally, she helped him up, then pointed to the deer. "Thanks," was all she said.

"You're welcome."

And standing close to her, he noticed two things. First, there was no belly-drop sensation in his gut, and no flustered scattery of his thoughts. She didn't make his blood rush any more. It was a relief. Second, he could look her in the eye now. Always before, he'd had to look up slightly, but he must have grown a final inch without realizing it, and dressed in heavy hiking boots while she wore simple laced shoes, they were the same height.

"I heard there was some excitement last night," she said.

"You did?"

She tapped her head. "Charles contacted me."

If her telepathy had been walled off to protect her, it was still a part of her and the professor could bespeak her more easily than the rest of them, and at greater distances. "Did he tell you the whole story?" he asked.

"He told me what he saw, but he caught only the tail end of the rescue." She grinned abruptly. "Angels on Christmas Eve! Warren likes theatrics."

"That was my idea, actually." He'd blurted it out before he realized that it might sound arrogant, and waved a hand. "I didn't mean - "

"It's okay," she said. "That was your idea?" He nodded. "I'm impressed, Scott."

"Yeah, well, I didn't think about the TV cameras."

"The professor took care of that."

"I know, but I should've thought of it."

She sighed, almost grandly. "In the middle of a crisis, you came up with a really clever way of getting a boy out of danger, and you kick yourself because you didn't think of _everything_?"

Shoving hands in his pockets, he didn't answer immediately, just stared out over the grounds. Except for an occasional spot of deep green from a pine, all the hedges and trees looked dry and prickly, and a winter-white jackrabbit bounded across the lawn in the dimming light. Snow had begun to come down harder. Her car door was still open, and white flakes landed on the seat, melting rapidly from the blast of the car's heater. "You need to shut your door," he said. She glanced around and kicked it closed with her foot, then turned back to him. She wasn't going to let him change the subject, apparently.

He sighed. "Okay, yeah, it was a crisis, and maybe most people panic so they can't think. But I didn't, Jean. I wasn't nervous at all. It was weird. It was like, all of a sudden, I could think _more_ clearly, not less. I just didn't think to look for the TV cameras, and I should have." Then he gestured to the car again. "Go turn off the engine. I have something I want to talk about." So she did, and they perched on the warm hood of her Toyota as he told her about the incident at the frat house, and the rest of what had happened at the rescue of Bobby. He ended with, "I've never really been in that kind of situation before, a real fight like that. Schoolyard stuff, sure. But never a _real_ fight. I just . . . "

"Didn't expect to be good at it?" she asked, slightly amused.

"I guess."

Jean thought about what he'd told her, and decided that she wasn't surprised. Despite his youth, Scott had always struck her as remarkably solid, and perhaps that was what drew her to him. Jean's world was cerebral. She could drift through a day so preoccupied with a theory or idea or impression that she took little notice of her actual surroundings, and might run into the corners of tables or strike the edges of doors as she exited them, as if she hadn't quite seen them. Sometimes she forgot to eat, or would become so engrossed in what she was reading or doing, that she put off going to the bathroom until she had to run there or she'd have wet her pants. Her body was an inconvenience that trammeled her mind, like jesses on a hawk.

But Scott lived in his body, observing his surroundings in a way she didn't. He never got lost, and had an appreciation for physical sensation that he rarely admitted to. She'd caught him surreptitiously fingering chenille throws or stroking the soft leather couch in the den. But beyond the aesthetic, that body-sense also made him grounded, and common sensical. His brain worked in terms of problems and solutions. If Jean adored science, it was the theories and possibilities that appealed to her. She sought the uncharted frontier, the excitement of what lay over the next hypothetical horizon. But Scott liked his road map from AAA with warnings of construction ahead and rest areas clearly marked. What a funny pair of friends they made. And yet it was his engineer's brain that appealed to her, just as she thought he enjoyed hearing about her theories, even while he was trying to poke friendly holes in her logic.

So now, the revelation that Scott-on-adrenaline had produced a dispassionate strategist didn't particularly surprise her. "You have the right kind of disposition, to be calm in a crisis," she told him. "Even normally, when you're faced with a problem, you break it down into component parts and deal with each individually, instead of being overwhelmed by it. You're good at patterns."

"Hnh," he grunted. "Like a math problem."

"Yeah, exactly. Add to that the fact that you don't tend to panic, and you're not too shy to take charge if you need to, and it makes you the imperturbable type." He laughed at that, and she took off her cap to shake the snow from it. The warmth of the engine beneath them had cooled long ago, and the sun was set now, the day's light all but gone. "It's too cold out here. Let's go in."

Sliding off her hood, he offered a hand to steady her as she got down. It was done easily, not like a boy half in awe of her, and she grinned. It was good to have her friend back.

* * *

><p>If Professor Xavier had managed to keep images of Warren off network television, and had calmed the crowd by subtly altering memories of what had occurred, <em>erasing<em> the entire incident hadn't been possible - nor perhaps even desirable. As a result, there was a fresh mutant story in the news during the days after Christmas, made especially appealing by eye-witness accounts that the ice boy had tried to save his burning church, then been carted off by an angel. Although it made a very different tale from the Winnipeg Marauder, reactions weren't all positive, and a few older stories of bat-eared boys and a child who could leap like a toad were resurrected in its wake, stories previously relegated to the tabloids for their apparent absurdity. Now serious newscasters asked if they might have a grain of truth. And one of those older stories trotted out afresh was Scott Summers' manifestation experience. "Laser-eyed boy disrupts senior prom, injures seven." The news program showed images of the structural damage to the gym caused by Scott's power.

"They're not _lasers_," Clarice snarled at the television from where she sat on the living room floor of her family home in Los Angeles. "They're _force blasts_. And he wouldn't hurt a fly."

"Not intentionally, anyway," EJ agreed. He was leaning up against the wall, arms crossed. The whole family had come in at the mention of "mutants." It was personal to them, now. "But you gotta admit, he'd be scary if we didn't know him."

"As 1999 approaches," the newscaster continued, "and the end of the millennium is just around the corner, some fear that the appearance of these mutated human beings is a symptom of environmental damage caused by factors ranging from Global Warming to radioactive pollution. But some religious leaders have another explanation . . ."

"It's obviously not natural," said a neatly dressed man on the screen; he wore suit and tie and the cotton-candy hair-style popular among some preachers. "It's a sign of God's displeasure - "

"Oh, give me a break!" said the Reverend Jeremiah Haight, clicking off the TV and dropping the remote on his chair as he stood to stalk off upstairs to his den. His children watched him go, knowing that look and wondering just what he was going to put in his sermon on Sunday, and Violet steeled herself for the damage control she would inevitably need to orchestrate when her husband brought up the controversial, even though she was proud of the fact that she had to do it. Just like his prophetic namesake, Jeremiah had never been a passive man, but she hoped nobody dropped him down any wells, metaphorically speaking. They still had a mortgage on the house.

EJ was grinning. "Go, Dad," he said. "Something tells me I've gotta make a tape for Slimboy."

Like father, like son, Violet thought.

Later that night, she found time to speak to her eldest daughter. She'd been talking to EJ, and to her husband as well, and had observations of her own about Clarice and Scott Summers, and if neither of the men were brave enough to confront Clarice, Violet Haight was made of sterner stuff. "You two are going to face not just one hurdle, but two," she told her daughter.

Clarice had been sitting at the kitchen table, organizing notes for a paper, and now glanced up at her mother, who was drying a colander that couldn't go in the dishwasher. "_Mama_," she began in the voice of all long-suffering children when their parents broached difficult topics. Then she threw up her hands. "God! You, EJ, Diane, Me'Shell . . . you're all making such a big _deal_ out of it! I think Scott and I are the only ones not worried!"

"And maybe that's why the rest of us are, honey. Relationships don't exist in a vacuum. I didn't just marry your father; I married a future Baptist minister. I got his whole church along with him. I just want to know that you and Scott aren't _ignoring_ parts of this relationship. Scott's one of the nicest young men I've ever met . . ."

"But he's _white_! And that suddenly _matters_!" Clarice was near tears.

"Well, yes, he's white. But that wasn't what I was going to say, actually. He's a mutant, and it's starting to look like that'll matter more. People've been fighting for black civil rights for thirty years, and you're not the first black girl to fall for a white boy. But mutants? That's something new, and the battle's just begun."

"Then maybe I can fight it with him."

Amused, Violet shook her head. Like father, like son. And like father, like daughter, too, apparently, but Violet couldn't say she regretted having helped Jeremiah to raise a litter of crusaders. "Maybe you can. But I want to be sure you're picking the battle _you_want to fight, not giving up your dreams for his. If you do that, you'll just wind up resenting him someday."

* * *

><p>Although presents had been exchanged on Christmas night after supper, whatever surprise the professor had planned for his students had been put on hold as he turned his attention to settling in Bobby Drake. The boy's parents hadn't wanted him to come home, but also weren't sure if they wanted him at Westchester, either. So for three days, the professor divided his time between trips to Allentown and private counseling sessions with Bobby. He even invited Bobby's parents to visit the school and gave them a tour, albeit a tour that didn't include the sub-basement. They met the other students over dinner, as well as some of the live-in staff such as Moira the maid, and Valeria, Frank's mother. On their best behavior, everyone struggled to reassure the Drakes that being a mutant wasn't a curse, and their son hadn't become a monster. In fact, they were all so absorbed in quelling fears about mutancy that they failed to consider the possibility of other forms of bigotry.<p>

"They are _staring_ at me," Ororo whispered to Scott, as the two of them went into the kitchen to fetch coffee after dinner, and brandy for the professor and Bobby's father.

Scott was amused. "Well, how many black chicks with white hair have they seen, Ro?"

Jaw clenched, she shook her head as she fetched down teacups so that Valeria could pour the coffee. "You do not understand. They are staring at Frank and me. I have seen it before. Not in the city, but here in Westchester, I have seen it."

"So? People stare at Clarie and me, too. It doesn't necessarily mean anything. Sometimes they're just curious."

Turning to face him, she shook her head again. "This is not curiosity. You truly do not see it, do you?"

"See _what_?"

"The _how_. Notice how they look at us, Scott. That is not _curiosity_."

"They are not liking it," Valeria agreed. "Small minds. I have spoken at them, earlier, about how I felt, after Francesco manifested. Charles asked it of me." She sniffed. "I do not like them."

Having found the brandy, Scott poured two shots each into brandy snifters, and then downed half a shot himself. Ororo rolled her eyes but he ignored her. What she'd said bothered him because he hadn't noticed while Valeria had, and he suddenly wondered what else he'd failed to see. He was reminded of the frat party. It was three days until 1999, yet even in Berkeley, racism still hid under the porch. "Even if they don't like it, Ro, what can they do? Ignore them."

"They make me nervous."

"They're not going to do anything to you," Scott said, picking up the snifters. "You could blow them all the way to Timbuktu if they tried."

But after the two of them had returned, he did watch, and he did see what she meant, and after the professor had released them for the evening, he went down to the gym to take out his frustrations by practicing kata. Jean followed an hour later with a bottle of water that she offered to him without comment. "You looked upset, when you left the dining room," she said.

By that point, he'd nearly exhausted himself and he took the water, drinking half of it at once. Then he undid the belt on his gi so that it hung open to let heat escape and wiped the sweat off his face with a towel. Sitting down on one of the weight machines, he pressed the bottle to his forehead. "The Drakes were giving Ro and Frank the 'look' - you know the one: the 'we don't approve but we're not going to say anything in polite company' look. Fuck. Can't people get _over_ the black-white thing?"

"Small minds," Jean said.

Scott snorted. "That's the same thing Valeria said. She's older than them, and she doesn't care."

"Not about Ro, no. But if Frank had brought home a nice Gypsy girl instead of a nice Kenyan girl, it might be a different story." Jean grinned. "She thinks Ororo is 'sensible.' Even if she can't cook."

Scott laughed, but Jean had a point. He'd heard Valeria make a few choice remarks concerning the Roma or Albanians, or - for that matter - northern Italians. Grandson of an émigré from Turin, Scott tried not to take offense about the latter.

"Have you and Clarice had trouble?" Jean asked, and Scott started. It was the first time she'd asked him anything directly about his girlfriend, but he'd been thinking just the other day that it was time to put those taboo topics behind them, so he answered.

"Just the frat party. And that wasn't specific. But now I wonder if there's stuff I'm not seeing."

"And it bothers you? The disapproval?"

"Only in general. Because people are stupid."

Jean nodded and they said nothing else for a while. He finished the water and wiped his face again with the towel. Finally, since she'd brought up Clarice first, he gathered his courage and broached the topic of her own relationship. "What about you and Ted?"

Surprised, she glanced over. High gym lights glittered on her dark auburn hair. She'd cut it last spring, and it fell in a sweep to her shoulders and just brushed her chin. "What about us?"

"Warren said you're this close" - he illustrated with forefinger and thumb - "to splitting up."

"Warren is a gossip."

"Yeah, he is. Is he right?"

Dropping her face into her hands, she rubbed at her eyes. "I don't know . . ." Then she raised her face again and looked at him. "Do you really want to hear this?"

"Sure." He nodded once, decisively. "You're my friend. I want to hear."

That won a smile. "Okay. Then, basically, the problem is that Ted's a lot more serious about all this than I am. He's been talking lately about getting an apartment together in the city and I just . . . I'm not ready for that, Scott. I don't think I'll ever be ready." She sighed. "He's not the one. I enjoy his company, and I like him as a person but . . . he's not the one. I'm not in love with him. And he's in love with me. I think."

"Sounds familiar," Scott quipped before really thinking about it. When her face went white, he raised both hands. "Christ, I'm sorry. I'm just kidding. Really. You never led me on."

"Oh, that makes me feel better. You think I led Ted on?"

"I don't know," he replied honestly. "But knowing you, I doubt it. Or you didn't lead him on any more than going out with anybody is leading them on. Dating's a risk. You don't know if it'll work out, or if you're going to wind up caring more than the other person does."

Leaning over, she locked hands between her knees and stared off at a gym wall. "It's funny. Usually you're the one who likes to have all his ducks in a row, and I'm the one who likes an adventure. But not in this. You're a lot braver than I am. You wear your heart on your sleeve."

"Not really." He thought about it a moment, then said, "You want an honest answer? No false modesty?" She looked over, then nodded, so he continued, "It's easy to ask someone out if you're pretty sure they'll say 'yes.' I usually heard 'yes.' But that's not wearing your heart on your sleeve - it's an ego trip. I was pretty arrogant, in high school." He turned the empty water bottle in his hands. "Becoming a mutant - and falling for you - were good for me. I don't take it for granted any more. Even so, you can still make mistakes." He thought about Phoebe. "Maybe this thing with Ted isn't a mistake, exactly, but if he's getting more serious than you want to get, it's time to break up with him. Or you will be leading him on."

"I know, I know. It's just . . . I'm a _wimp_, Scott. I don't want to hurt him."

"Jean - he knows already. He may not want to admit it to himself, but I'll bet you ten bucks he knows. The longer you put it off, the harder it'll be."

She sighed again, then slipped an arm around his shoulder to pull him sideways and hug him. "You should put up a stand like Lucy on Peanuts. 'Relationship advice, one bottle of water.'" He grinned at that, then hugged her back. Her hair was soft, and holding her sent the echo of a thrill through him, but he suppressed it. He was just missing Clarice.

* * *

><p><em>I believe we have a<em> situation.

It was a mental call from the professor, late at night on the day before New Year's Eve. Only Scott and Hank were awake, the former reading a book in his room and the latter working on something in the lab.

_The new boy is up on the roof, considering jumping. Obviously, the logistics of getting me up there with him are problematic, at best. _Humor tinged Xavier's mindvoice. _I could perhaps address Bobby mentally, but I believe this is a situation that favors face-to-face interaction. And I also believe it time that he got to know the rest of you outside of meals. _

Already into jeans and a sweatshirt, Scott headed out of his room for the stairs leading up to the attic loft that Ororo shared with Frank. "Professor," he said aloud, because he preferred to verbalize even if he didn't need to, "I don't know the first thing about suicide intervention!"

_I will be right there with you, to guide you. The main thing you must remember is that those who threaten suicide rarely _want _to die. They simply can't bear to keep living, so you must give them a reason to. Don't be afraid to talk about death, either. The blunt approach is best. _

Scott's throat was dry as he reached the top of the stairs and yanked open the stairwell window. It was one of several ways onto the roof, and he used it when he didn't want to disturb Ororo to climb over her balcony. It was very black out, and cold, but fortunately Bobby hadn't gone far across the shingles. He was a small boy with sandy hair just starting to darken with adolescence, and a sweet face, though Scott could make out neither clearly. At the crack of the window opening, Bobby jerked his head around and Scott called, "Hey," because he didn't want to startle the kid into falling when he was there to keep him from jumping.

"What do you want?" the voice might have been belligerent, if it hadn't picked that moment to crack. Scott bit back a laugh. Amusement would _not_ help. He remembered what the professor had said: be direct.

"You thinking about jumping?"

He could tell that his question had caught Drake by surprise, because the boy's head jerked up a little, then his chin jutted out. "Yeah. Maybe. What's it to you?"

_Professor? _Scott sent, because speaking aloud just now wouldn't be a good idea. _Help? _

_Remember - the direct approach, Scott. Answer his question, and follow your instincts. And don't forget what I told you, when you called me after speaking with EJ last spring. You mustn't be afraid to share your own feelings. And your past experiences. _

_That's why you sent me up here, isn't it? _

A tinge of amusement again. _Partly. But you and Henry also happened to be the ones awake. _

_Oh, just grand. Thanks. _To Drake, Scott said, "Well, if you jump, I'll be the one who has to clean up the sidewalk. It's kind of messy, so I'd really rather it if you didn't."

Scott could see the kid wasn't sure if Scott were pulling his leg or not, and at that moment, Hank came swinging up over the roof edge, nearly causing Bobby to tumble off from fright. As quick as a snake, Hank grabbed and steadied him. "As you were, Mister Drake. Now what's this I hear about you wanting to try out non-existent wings? Only Warren is allowed to jump off the roofs around here."

"Go away!" Bobby snarled at both Scott and Hank. "Leave me alone. What do _you_ two care, what I do? What does anybody care?"

"We care," Hank replied.

Bobby pointed at Scott. "All he cares about is cleaning up the damn sidewalk!"

And Scott had to laugh as he inched his way over to sit down beside Bobby while Hank found a spot facing the boy - between him and the roof's edge. "I was kidding," Scott said.

"He has a rather disturbed sense of humor," Hank agreed.

"So why do you want to kill yourself?" Scott asked.

"Maybe because I'm a _freak_?" the boy screamed. "God, is it so hard to figure out?" Then he added more softly, "And I killed a girl."

"No, you did not," Hank replied, firmly.

"What d'you know about it?"

"The professor told us what happened," Scott explained.

"Those boys were threatening your friend, and you became rightfully protective," Hank said. "In his own recklessness, one set fire to his own girlfriend's hair. He will have to live with that. You, however, are not to blame. It seems to me that you were struggling to put _out_ the fire, even if you could not yet control your power enough to do so."

"So what good is it?" Bobby snapped.

"You _learn_ to control it," Scott said. "And next time, you can make the ice go where you want."

"But I didn't want it in the first place!"

"I didn't want mine, either. I've learned to live with it."

"Yeah? Well, you can like being a freak. I just want to go home and be normal again. But I can't. So what's the point in living?"

_Christ, he sounds just like I did_, Scott sent privately to the professor. There was no distinct reply in words, only a bubble of mental amusement. _How did you put up with me? It's pathetic! _

_Don't react to his words, Scott; react to the _pain_. You do remember how that felt? _

He did. He remembered dreams broken into a hundred irreparable pieces, or so he'd thought at the time. Some still were irreparable, but he had new dreams. "Y'know," he said, "I thought about killing myself, too, after I got my power. I wrecked my high school gymnasium - on prom night, no less - and hurt people. I didn't kill anyone, but I could have, and it _would_ have been my fault. I was a month away from graduation, and everything just came apart. I figured I'd never go to college, never have a normal life, never have a girlfriend, or sex, again." He nudged Drake, who laughed with embarrassment.

"I can't control my power, Bobby. That's why I wear these." He touched his glasses. "Or at least, I can't turn my power on and off, like you can. When it first manifested, I thought I had only two options: tear my eyes out, or commit suicide. The first didn't exactly appeal because I'd have had to do it myself or I'd have blasted a hole through any doctor who did it for me, and I'm not big on long-term pain." He grinned, but this time, Drake didn't. Neither did Hank, who'd never heard this story. He listened with a quiet, thoughtful expression. "I might have tried to live with a blindfold, but figured I'd slip up eventually, so dying seemed like my only real option. I went into my parent's bedroom and got one of my dad's guns. I knew where they were, and I could load it by feel. So I took it back to my room and sat there on the bed for about three hours, trying to work up the courage to pull the trigger. I think I stuck the thing in my mouth about twenty times. Gunmetal tastes pretty bad, y'know." He could make light of it now, but he remembered exactly how his hands had shaken and how he'd begun to sweat anew every time he'd felt cold metal on his tongue. "But in the end, I couldn't do it."

"Why not?" Drake asked, morbidly fascinated.

"Because I didn't know who'd find me. I wanted to blow my head off, and I didn't - and I didn't want anybody in my family to have to clean up the mess, either. So I took out the ammo and hid the gun. I figured I could always do it later. But my dad found it, and that ended that."

It was one of those acts for which Scott wasn't sure if he loved his father, or hated him, but when Chris Summers had discovered that one of his weapons was missing, it had taken him less than a minute to draw the correct conclusion, because he'd known exactly what he would have done in his son's shoes. He'd turned Scott's bedroom upside down until he'd found the gun, then had said only, "It's a coward's way," and had taken all the guns and locked them in a chest, then hidden the knives and razor blades and medicines as well, just to be safe.

"I might have found another way to do it, but two days later, the professor showed up at our house and offered me a third choice. It wasn't what I'd planned for my life, but it was better than dying, so here I am. And you know what? All those things I thought I'd never do? I've done them all. Well, all but the normal life. It's mostly normal, but I still have to sleep in goggles."

"You've done all of it? Even the . . . you know. _That?_"

"Sex? Yeah, even that."

"With who?"

"Hey! A gentleman doesn't tell." And he punched the boy's arm in friendly fashion.

"You are too young," Hank added, "to make irreversible decisions about life and death before exploring all possibilities for your future."

They both watched Bobby Drake consider that. The cold was starting to sink in. Bobby, of course, didn't feel it, and Hank liked cool weather, but Scott preferred California sun. "How long have you been a mutant?" Bobby asked Scott finally.

"I've been a mutant all my life. So have you. But my power only showed up two and a half years ago."

"And you?" Bobby asked Hank. "How long for you?"

"I was born manifesting my mutation, Robert. At the time, doctors called it a mild congenital deformity, though in my case, it aided my physical abilities, rather than impeded them, and my parents raised me to regard it as a blessing, not a curse. I played sports, took piano lessons, and my father taught me how to use every mechanical tool in his shed. It's hard to say if my mutation also includes my mental facility, but in any case, I was set to graduate high school at fifteen when Professor Xavier learned about me and came to speak with my parents. That was the first time we heard the term 'mutant' and 'X-gene.' With the professor's support and assistance, I went on to college normally - or as normally as one can at fifteen - and later helped Charles to set up his school here. Thus, my tale is less dramatic than yours or Scott's, and I never truly considered taking my own life. But there was also never a time when I could claim to be 'normal,' or didn't hear 'monkey boy' applied to me behind my back. My mother once told me that few true blessings come without two edges."

Resting his chin on his drawn-up knees, Bobby didn't reply. But he no longer seemed so angry. _How are we doing, professor? _Scott sent.

_Excellently. But remember that these feelings will come and go. We are hardly out of the woods for good. Ask him to give you a promise. _

_Like the one you made me give you? _Scott was amused.

_Precisely. _And the mental touch faded away.

"Look," Scott said aloud, and Bobby glanced up at him. "Neither Hank nor I can tell you what to do with your life. It's your life. All we can do is tell you how it's been for us, and maybe there are some options you haven't considered. They won't be the same ones you had, but it's not the end of the world. At least, it wasn't for us. Still, it's you who has to choose."

Bobby nodded cautiously, sensing that he wasn't going to get off this easily.

"But make me a promise, okay? If you decide you're going to do it, you come talk to me first, tell me when and how. Jumping off the roof isn't the way to go. I was joking earlier, about the sidewalk. There isn't one down there. You'd just fall in the bushes and wind up in Hank's infirmary. It's not really high enough to kill you unless you were to land just right."

Caution had shifted to confusion. Scott doubted that the boy had expected to get advice on what would and wouldn't work. But this way, he realized Scott was taking him seriously, and that was Scott's real point. "Okay," he agreed.

"So you promise you'll come talk to me first?"

"I promise."

"Shake on it." Scott offered a hand, and Bobby took it.

* * *

><p>"What do you think of them?" Ororo asked Frank from where she stood at the french doors to her loft's balcony. As always, when alone, they spoke French; and just now, she was looking down into the yard below. Scott, Warren and Jean were on the basketball court, playing what looked like three-way one-on-one. She couldn't tell who was winning, but would have bet on Scott.<p>

"Think what of whom?" Frank said. He was lounging on the bed, studying for the SAT and drinking a coffee.

"Of Jean and Scott, _cretín_!"

Frank shrugged by way of reply, and Ro demanded, "What kind of answer is _that_?"

"What kind do you want?"

"I don't think Scott is over her. Jean, I mean. But he thinks he is. What do you think?"

"Time will tell." Frank turned a page and returned to his reading. Ororo threw a dirty shirt from the laundry bin at him.

* * *

><p>The newest door in the sub-basement slid aside, and the professor led his students behind it. What he'd intended to give them for Christmas was being revealed on New Year' Day. Perhaps that was fitting - a new year, a new chapter in their mission here.<p>

Turning his chair, he watched them file in and look about: Hank, Jean, Warren, Frank, Ororo and Scott, bringing up the rear with young Bobby. After the events of two nights prior, the boy had latched onto Scott as a substitute big brother. He'd needed a role model desperately, and had begun imitating what Scott did, what he wore, what he ate (which could be a problem), and even how he walked.

"It looks like a locker room," Warren said now, baffled.

"Pretty high-tech locker room," Scott remarked as he walked along one of the two walls, studying metal cabinets. Finding one with his own name on it, he pulled open the glass door and withdrew a dark sweatshirt stored inside. It had a small X stitched on the breast. Next, he lifted out a thin, kevlar vest made along the lines of a police flak-jacket. On the back, in place of a name, was a large white X inside a circle. Laughing, Scott held it up. "It looks like a big target, professor. 'Please shoot me!'"

The students all laughed, and Xavier smiled. "I admit, that thought hadn't occurred to me," he said. The others had gone to find their own lockers, though Bobby looked for his in vain. "This was built before you arrived," Xavier told him. He hated to leave the boy out, but, "You aren't yet ready for this stage of training, Bobby. When you are older, you will be able to join them."

The professor could sense puzzlement in the others. He'd been enjoying their anticipation over these past months, and their attempts to ferret out what he and Reed had been up to. Now, they were trying to hide their disappointment, and he caught more than one stray thought of, _This is it? A new locker room and some workout clothes is all they've been hiding?  
><em>

When he thought they'd waited long enough, and were winding down in their exploration of the contents of their new lockers, he triggered a button on the remote in his hand, and a light went on above a door hidden in the recess on one side of the hallway. The flashing red light caught their eyes - a circle with a bar through it. Then it switched to a steady white X. He'd instructed Reed to be certain that the wait/ready light was more distinctive than going red to green, for Scott's sake. Curious, his students had all gathered around the door, and when the X appeared, the door opened to reveal the heart of his surprise.

He heard soft "Wow"s as they moved through the short corridor into the room beyond, their faces a mix of awe and mild confusion as they studied the huge, round room with its soaring metal walls and lighted glass insets. Slowly, they filed out onto the circled X set in floor's center.

"What is this place?" Warren asked.

"It's an automated training center," Xavier told them, "but Dr. Richards jokingly referred to it as his 'danger room.'" Then he pointed to a high, lighted alcove like a stadium box with a reinforced glass viewing port, set above the door through which they'd entered. "That is the control center. You reach it by stairs, or an elevator in my case, located back in the entry corridor. Most of the room's more interesting, and more dangerous, features are programmed from there, and the glass can absorb nearly any blow except Scott's eye-blasts at full power."

"Impressive," Hank muttered, a gleam of appreciative envy in his eye that Xavier found amusing. Hank and Reed were good for each other, he thought. Reed was someone to whom Hank had to look up intellectually, and Hank could follow even Reed's more esoteric ideas.

"Dr. Richards left you the design blueprints, Hank. He may have created the center, but I fear most of the upkeep will fall to you, with Scott to assist."

Henry appeared positively ecstatic, and Scott said, "Man, I want to see the specs for _this_ place."

"So what does it do, professor?" Ororo asked. She was always the one who cut to the chase.

Smiling, Xavier held up the remote in his hand. "As I said, the more interesting, and more dangerous features can be programmed only from above, but Dr. Richards did produce several of these remote controls, by which other features of the room can be turned on or off, or an entire program halted in an emergency. The room will also respond to verbal "Halt" or "Cease" commands - including those given in Italian or Bantu." That got a laugh. They'd all heard Frank or Ororo lose their English under pressure.

Xavier pressed a button, and the room slowly began to rotate. "Whoa . . ." Warren said, wings flexing automatically as the rest put out hands to balance themselves. "It's a Merry-Go-Round!" Jean laughed.

Xavier double-checked to be certain that he occupied one of the "safe spots," then pressed yet another button, and portions of the flooring began to rise and fall in irregular patterns, even while it continued to spin at a slowly increasing speed. His students scrambled to keep their feet on the morphing surface. They were all laughing now, enjoying the game, and even Warren stayed down to play along. "I'm going to get dizzy!" Scott shouted, as Ororo asked, "Is this all it does?"

"Oh, no," Xavier replied. "Dr. Richards did not dub it his danger room for nothing. Imagine this, while being fired at by various kinds of weaponry. The safe mode uses only paint, but there are options for soft rubber bullets, dull-edged projectiles, and lasers that will give a sting."

"What about me?" Warren called, finally launching into the air to hover. "Get me from up here."

Smiling, Xavier pressed a third button, and a net of light appeared three feet above Warren's head. "Navigate that - but touch a beam with body or wings, and you will receive an electric shock. You can cause the beams to shift, as well." And the lights began to weave slowly. "The pattern is randomly generated, so don't expect to memorize it. The same goes for the flooring."

And pressing a final, red button, Xavier watched the lasers disappear and the floor cease spinning and settle back into a simple floor. "That is only a portion of what the room will do, children. Merry Christmas."

* * *

><p>Social gears changed for Scott that spring semester. He took a heavy course load, and finally began to tackle a level of math that he'd never seen in high school. Despite an easy fall with Numerical Analysis and Geometry, he'd still not pulled spectacular grades. Among other things, he'd been distracted by a new romance. So when he returned for the spring, he decided it was time to buckle down and apply himself more. Multivariable Calculus, Introduction to Analysis, and Linear Algebra and Differential Equations required it. This was the first time he'd attempted three math courses in a single semester, but if he wished to finish early, he'd decided that he had to do more than take summer courses. To reward himself for this diligence, he signed up for two courses he wanted and that would fulfill gen-ed requirements - an introductory level cultural anthropology, and Science from Antiquity Through Newton. It was a fateful decision.<p>

The previous fall, he and EJ had taken a generic world history course, and had lucked out, getting a professor who emphasized social history and technological developments, rather than kings and things. Scott had fallen in love. Why was bronze rare? Why had the wheel never been developed in the Americas? Why was pyramid architecture so prevalent all over the world (without resorting to theories of space invaders)? How had humans developed farming in the first place? And why did human cultures develop in the ways that they did, given the impact of geography on history? They weren't questions he'd ever thought to ask, but the answers had fascinated him. So that spring, he sought out more of the same, and tended to do all homework for those courses first. Around February, EJ remarked in passing, "Man, I think you're chasing the wrong major," and by the beginning of March, Scott was starting to wonder the same thing. But he was stubborn, and convinced that the professor needed him, so he relegated his interest in the history of technology to the status of a hobby. Yet somewhere in the back of his head, he wondered if mathematicians and closet engineers ever became archaeologists? He even bought himself an Indiana Jones hat that Clarice said looked stupid, but he wore it anyway.

At the same time, Clarice was going through transformations of her own. As an intended astronomy major, she had to take many of the same math courses Scott did, including the calculus sequence. And as with all large classes, she felt insignificant - a speck of dark flotsam in a pale flood. Though she knew perfectly well after a semester that the percentage of blacks at Berkeley was low (despite a student union named after MLK), her roommate was black, and so was most of her personal circle. Scott and Lee were the odd ones out, not her. That meant it was mostly on campus that she was reminded half the student body was Asian, and much of the rest was white or Latino. She was one of a small percentage that constituted "everybody else."

So feeling self-conscious on that first day of her second semester, she was considering a seat in the back row when she noticed two other dark spots amid all the pale, down further on the right-hand side and slightly isolated by empty seats all around them. While she'd always detested segregation, especially of the voluntary variety, she now made her way to where the other two - both girls - were sitting, and asked, "Do you mind if I sit with you?"

They looked up. One was dressed neatly and wore a simple, straightened hairstyle none too different from Clarice's bob, but the other sported tight pants, sculpture on her head, and sculpture on her hands, and Clarice couldn't figure out how the girl could _write_ with nails that long, never-mind how many hours and how many extensions it had taken to design and braid the complicated artwork of her hair.

"Sit down, sit down," said the one with the nails and hair, and patted the chair beside her. "I'm Janice. Call me Jan."

"Nikeesha," said the other, leaning across to smile at Clarice. "Jan's in chemistry and I'm in electrical engineering and computer science."

"I'm Clarice. I'm majoring in astronomy."

"_What?_" the other two said in unison, but they regarded her less as a black oddity than as mildly insane for tackling such a difficult major, and after class, they asked her to eat lunch with them. There, they met Diane as well, and over rice, the two freshmen were treated to the details of Jan's current project - to start a student organization for black women in the sciences. "There's BGESS," Jan said, ticking off existing groups on her fingers, "for black grad students in sciences and engineering. And there's the Society for Women Engineers. But I want something for black women in all the hard sciences, grads and undergrads both. I read that only one in every _twenty one thousand_ black women receives a Ph.D. in math or the natural sciences. We got a better chance of being struck by lightning, sisters, than of earning a doctorate, unless we support each other."

So, on that January day in a Berkeley campus cafeteria, watching rain slide down the window outside, four girls made a spontaneous pact that they'd see each other through to advanced degrees, come hell or high water - or difficult boyfriends. Two would take masters, Nikeesha and Diane, and two would take doctorates, Jan and Clarice. And all became founding members of BBWS, Black Berkeley Women in the Sciences. Jan, with her boundless energy and forceful personality - not to mention a commanding height of six feet (hair not included) - led the battle, and the rest were her myrmidons. It was an ironic end, Clarice would think years later, for the girl who'd been dubbed an oreo in high school. The fish out of water had finally found her pond, and a fight in which she took a personal interest.

But having a mission came with a price: she lost her first real love. It was a slow disintegration, not marked by catastrophic clashes or screaming fights, but only by pressure from friends, and the demands of different interests. The honeymoon period of their romance was over, and Scott was terribly busy with schoolwork and band practice - not to mention karate - while Clarice was busy with schoolwork and BBWS. But if they saw less of each other than their first semester, they began to talk more about permanence, and that was when their trouble began. Clarice had become even more set on pursuing a career in astrophysics, and if Scott entertained private doubts about his commitment to math, he still felt a need to return to Westchester. "Come with me when I graduate," he'd tell her. "You can finish your degree out East."

"I want to do it _here_," she'd reply. "I can't just up and leave in the middle. Why can't you stay in California with me?"

"Because I owe the professor," he'd say, and then touch his glasses. "And I owe other kids like me." And angry, he'd get up and leave the room.

"I owe other kids like me, too," she'd call after him.

But sometimes she wavered in her resolve, and talked to her new black sisters about astronomy programs in New York. "And what," Jan would ask sarcastically, "are the national ratings for these universities? Any of them on the verge of synthesizing a new element?" Jan's regular appeals to Berkeley's breakthroughs with the Gas-Filled Separator amused the rest of them. Chemistry wasn't her major; it was her religion. "And you'd throw all that away for a white man? If he really loves you, he'll stay here. We made a pact, remember? No more following the goddamn men around!"

"Jan, _Cornell_ is in New York. It's in Ithaca, not Manhattan, but it's still New York. And it's _only_ one of the most prestigious astronomy and physics programs in the United States."

"So go live in the snow and the New York traffic. But don't come crying to me, girl, when you wind up his little black wife in a white man's big house, and no degree."

Clarice doubted that would happen, but national averages weren't on her side, so Jan's warnings had more of an effect than she wanted them to. "You just don't like him," she'd reply, angrily.

"I like him fine. But he got that white boy entitlement thing going."

"No, he doesn't!"

"Yes, he does."

"He's a mutant!"

"So? He's still a white boy."

EJ, at least, came down in support of Scott when she asked him what he thought. "I know where Janice is coming from," he said. "But she's only part right. Scott is a white boy. I told you that before. We're born like we're born, y'know? But he's got ears, and he listens. And he's got eyes, and they shoot those weird blast things. It's made him see the world a little differently."

Unfortunately, and although these conversations weren't conducted in Scott's presence, he was well aware that Clarice's friends had doubts about him, and for the first time, found himself truly uncomfortable when Clarice took him to parties or functions. It wasn't the mild discomfort of an unfamiliar culture, but the very real distress of knowing he wasn't welcome, so he found excuses to avoid anything that included Jan Farmer, even casual lunch, and Clarice was reminded of what EJ had said the previous semester. He might be a brother to EJ, but he wasn't _a_ brother, and if Clarice felt like a raven in the snow in her Berkeley classes, he was a lone white pigeon at black functions, while Jan was a great black hawk. She had a fierce nature, and ate pigeons for supper, even of the mutant variety.

As he had the year before, Scott went home with EJ and Clarice for spring break, and away from the social pressure cooker of Berkeley, the two rediscovered a little of what had drawn them to each other the previous year. And Clarice had a long talk with her mother about Scott and Jan and schools and compromise. "I can't make that decision for you, honey," her mother said. "And neither can your friends at Berkeley - or Scott. It has to be your decision."

"But I love him."

Violet sighed and sipped her coffee. The two of them had played hooky from Sunday School, catching breakfast at a local IHOP in order to get away from the rest of the family, and from Scott as well, who hadn't gone to church. That was another issue between Scott and Clarice, and if it hadn't developed the same downhill force as their conflicting careers, it was one more mark on the "incompatible" side of the tally.

"Love," Violet said now, "isn't the same thing as living with somebody for the next forty years. Do you have any idea how many domestic disputes your father and I have seen between couples who hated each other as much as they loved each other? I'd count more on you and Scott as friends, honey. But it still don't solve the other problems. Or the fact that your girlfriends don't like your boyfriend."

"Jan and Nikeesha say they do like him."

"Baloney. That Jan's got man issues," Violet replied with a smile. "Even so, she's a barometer of what you're going to face. It's racism's baby, that kind of doubt. She don't trust him, and she's got good reason. I think your Jan's a little overprotective, even if she means well. But _you_ still have to decide if you love Scott enough to give up part of what you want in order to follow what he wants. If you transfer to Cornell, he'd drive to Ithaca to see you, and be as proud as punch to do it. But he got a mission of his own, honey. He wants to teach mutant kids. You want to play with telescopes and show black girls they can do math. But being a couple's about more than two people living under the same roof, or in the same state. You each got your own interests and goals - it's a bad thing if you don't - but you got to have a mission together, too, even if it's just to raise healthy, happy kids. The best marriages are the ones where the couple's got a mission." She eyed her daughter. "Do you and Scott have one, Clarie? And is it the same?"

Clarice couldn't answer. And for the next two weeks, she struggled with what her mother had asked her, talking Scott's ear off about goals and missions until, in frustration, he asked her where it all was coming from. "I just need to know who we are as a 'we,'" she said. Baffled by that, he was unable to reply, just as Clarice had been unable to answer her mother. And subconsciously, he recognized the shadow of the end behind his silence.

He'd feared it since spring break. Time away from school had given them a moratorium, but not a stay of execution, and he'd begun to suffer from chronic insomnia and an upset stomach, not just his ever-present headaches. He was being eaten away inside by a cancer of dread. Once, he and Clarice had spent their evenings talking about science and books, philosophy and schoolwork. Now, they spent them alternatively quarreling, or in frenzied fucking to make up. Sex seemed to be the only thing they didn't disagree about. He couldn't concentrate when he needed to most, and his grades slumped. Sometimes he cried himself to sleep, as much from school pressure as from the despondency of a failing romance. She cried herself to sleep most nights, or stayed up too late, talking to Diane and eating doughnuts.

EJ observed it all with the same kind of horror that one felt upon watching a car spin out of control and head directly for another. And he couldn't save them. It was what he'd feared would happen from the beginning, if not in the way he'd feared. Scott wasn't savaging Clarice. She was savaging him with all the innocence of a young tiger shredding the arm of its handler. Scott wasn't what she needed, but he'd been close enough to seem like it, and now she was asking him for what he couldn't give, and he was balking.

"If this doesn't resolve itself soon," Diane said to EJ one evening, "they're both going to flunk their finals."

They were eating dinner at EJ's apartment while Scott and Clarice were out - separately - on their own business. EJ set down plates of stir-fry on the dining table and then took the seat beside hers. "I know. She's breaking his heart."

"Well he's breaking hers!"

"That too," EJ agreed. "She don't want to let him go, and he don't want to let her go. That don't mean what they got is good anymore." Then he added bitterly, "This is all Janice's fault."

"It is _not_."

"Shit, to listen to you two, you'd think that woman walked on water! She ain't Peter, DeeDee. She's a goddamn lioness and she scares the pants off _me_, never mind poor Slimboy. She's filled you and Clarie's head with all kinds of crap. Some of it's good. Some ain't. But she got a thing against my brother, and that bugs me."

"I know," Diane replied quietly, and they ate in silence for a while. Finally, Diane said, "Scott needs to break up with Clarice."

EJ shook his head. "He won't do it. He's like a freakin' terrier with a rag. I think he's a little afraid, too, that he'll look like the bad guy if he does. It'll have to be Clarie to do it."

Diane nodded and EJ knew it would be taken care of. People underestimated Diane because they assumed that one had to be loud and forceful to get matters accomplished, but Diane was an architect, and saw the weak points and strengths in structures. She knew just where to knock out the struts.

Three days later, on a Friday evening, Clarice asked EJ to vacate the apartment for an hour, so she could talk to Scott, and when EJ came back, he found Scott sitting on the bathroom floor, glasses off and crying so hard his face was swollen and he was half sick. "It's over," he told EJ, when he heard his friend's footsteps stop in the doorway. "Two months ago, I thought I was going to be your brother-in-law; now it's all blown to hell. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt her."

"I'd say you both got beat-up about evenly here." And EJ ran cold water onto a washcloth, squatting down to give it to Scott, so he could wipe his face. "You might not wind up my brother-in-law, but you're still my brother. Come on, Slim. Lets go get falling-down drunk."

* * *

><p><strong>Notes:<strong> Regarding Scott and Jean's relative heights, I've used the actors, not the comic; Marsden is shorter (by half an inch) than Janssen. The Danger Room is based on set descriptions when it was to have been part of X2. BBWS is not a real Berkeley student organization but the statistic that Jan quotes comes from a publication of the National Children's Defense Fund. The paper announcing the discovery of element #118 at Berkeley has since been retracted, but it would have been important news in 1999.


	12. Saving Cats

Guilt on three fronts made Jean Grey sullen. First, there was simple guilt arising from the fact that she was at a party when she still had one-and-a-half manuscripts-worth of corrections, from two different professors, to enter into her dissertation before she could turn in the defense draft to her committee. And one of those sets of corrections involved serious questions of her data, with her defense only six weeks away. She'd been locking herself in the mansion's lab, writing, editing, and re-running her stats, emerging only to sleep and eat, both of which she did rather fitfully. Now, she'd been dragged out to this utterly useless party at Ted's insistence.

Second, she felt guilty because she was here with Ted, although a month had passed since her conversation with Scott at Christmas, about breaking up with him. As she'd told Scott then, she was a wimp, and working on her dissertation had made an excellent excuse to avoid the matter. She didn't want to end the affair until after her defense, simply because she had too many other things on her mind without also having to deal with a moping Ted Roberts.

Last, she felt guilty for the simple reason that she'd just managed to spill salmon-cheese dip on the nice, cream tablecloth, and then had followed it up (in an effort to catch the dip) by spilling wine on the carpet. "God, I am such a _fucking klutz_!" she muttered now, near tears as she tried futilely to soak red wine out of gray carpet with a handful of napkins.

"Jean, honey, it's okay," Ted was saying, trying to help her.

"It is not _okay_," she snapped, shoving his hands away in frustrated rage. "I ruined their _carpet_."

That she barely knew the host made it that much worse. This was a party to which Ted had invited her, and the host - a medical resident rather than a doctoral candidate - was a friend of his. She approached now to kneel down and whisper to Jean, "Don't worry about it. I have an infant, so I have a carpet with Stain Guard."

And Jean laughed because she was relieved and embarrassed and grateful all at once, and she silently blessed those who knew just what to say. Letting Ted lead her away and sit her down on a sofa, she told him, "I'm sorry for snapping at you."

"It's okay." He brushed hair back from her cheek with a forefinger. His touch was always gentle. "I know you've been uptight, and McMasters is being a bastard at the eighteenth hole." One of her committee members - and not Banner, the director - had taken a sudden dislike to some parameters in her experiments, and was trying to insist that she rerun them with different types of controls. Banner and Hank were both livid. Ted was worried. And Jean was ready to tear out her hair or burst into tears every time she looked at McMasters' comments on her draft. If he balked too much and refused to sign off on the dissertation, she wouldn't graduate. All those years, and all that work, and it hung on the whim of a sixty-five-year-old department divo who was jealous of Banner and taking it out on Banner's students. Academic politics at their finest.

"I wish you'd move in with me and let me take care of you," Ted said now.

"Ted, don't . . . ."

"Okay, okay." Frowning, he turned his attention to his finger food.

And now, Jean felt guilty for a fourth reason. He just wanted to take care of her, but the longer she stayed with him, the more she realized that he wasn't the one she wanted to be taken care of by - or to care for - for the rest of her life, and she wondered why. He was kind, he was thoughtful, and he was interested in the same things she was. Why couldn't she love him?

But she didn't. She got more excitement from an email of Scott's than from seeing Ted, and if her friends interested her more than her boyfriend, there was something wrong with that picture.

"She's nice," Jean said now, to make conversation.

"Who?"

"The host. Barb . . . what's her name?"

"Clark. Barb and Randy Clark." But he was frowning.

"What is it?" she asked.

He looked around to judge who was sitting near, then glanced almost involuntarily at a big man in the corner, younger than most of them, and attractive in an excitable Saint Bernard way. "That's Randy over there."

"Yeah? He's tall."

"He's five years younger than Barb."

Jean blinked, not quite sure that she followed his reasoning. "So?"

"Well, don't you think that's a little weird?"

"Why?"

"He's five years younger!" Ted hissed again, as if the answer should be obvious. "He's not a med student. He's a _banker_. Or something like that. He's going into bank management. I mean, what have they got in common?"

"A kid and a mortgage, apparently," Jean replied.

"Honey, be serious."

"I am!" She set down her plate and stared at the side of his face. He could be so understanding and solicitous of her, then would come out with the oddest prejudices. "What is the big deal?"

"That she's twenty-nine and he's twenty-four? She married him when he was barely out of college. Don't you think it's a little strange if a woman in her mid-twenties dates a kid who's barely old enough to drink?"

"You're a year younger than me," Jean pointed out, amused.

"That's just a year. Big deal."

"Exactly. A year. Five years. Big deal. Now, if she were ten years older than him, maybe it'd be weird. But five? So what? And even if she were ten years older, how do you know it wouldn't be a perfect match? You told me on the way over here that you know Barb, but not her husband. You're not exactly in a position to judge. Do you even know how they met? And what if - just for the sake of argument - I were dating Hank instead of you?"

"_Hank?" _Ted was trying very hard not to laugh.

"For the sake of argument. Hank's five years older than me. Would that bother you?"

"Well, ah, it's a little different," he temporized.

"How? Because the guy's allowed to be older?"

"No, not that . . . " But he didn't elaborate immediately, and abruptly disgusted, she stood to walk away, ostensibly to refill her wine glass.

As it turned out, the hostess was standing nearby, and Jean made a point of stopping to apologize again for the carpet. "Really, don't worry about it, darlin'" Barb told her. She was a smallish woman with curly blond hair and a face that was earnest rather than pretty. "Wine is no worse than orange carrot mush."

Jean smiled, both at the carrot mush and at being called 'darling' by a contemporary. Barb had a Southern accent as heavy as Ted's, but broader. "Can I ask a nosey question?" Jean said.

"Sure."

"How did you have a baby and survive residency?"

And the other woman broke up laughing. "I don't know! I ask myself that all the time. But you do what you have to do, and really, I just carried Becky. Randy's the saint who covered most of the child care." Jean watched her turn to shoot her husband a fond grin. He was aware of it but only vaguely, in that way of someone hears his name in another conversation, but doesn't want to leave the one he's in, to investigate. "His employer actually _gives_ paternity leave. Imagine that?"

And Barb's quip gave Jean a perfect, if unexpected, entry point to satisfy her own curiosity, after what Ted had said. "How did you and Randy meet?"

"Rescuing cats."

"Excuse me?"

Barb was grinning. It must have been her natural expression - as opposed to Jean's habitual frown - because she had the beginnings of crows' feet in the corners of her eyes, and brackets around her mouth. "Rescuing cats," she reiterated. "Randy went to college at Mary Washington, and was involved with the Siamese Rescue Organization. It's like a humane society for siamese and part siamese."

"And that's why . . . "

"We have a house full of cats, yes."

Jean had counted four, so far.

"Anyway, I was Randy's New York City contact. I'd collect cats here, then drive down with them to the center in Virginia. Or I'd bring back cats from the center to place with families in this region." She shrugged, artlessly. "We did a lot of talking, both long-distance and in person. Eventually, we started dating, and when he graduated, he moved up here with me. It was hard, because he was leaving his babies."

"It looks like you brought some of them with you."

"Well, six of them, although we ended up having to give away one when the baby was born - which is exactly the kind of thing the Rescue doesn't want to happen. But when it's a choice between your child and your cat, that's not a choice. So we found her a good home."

"And now you have five."

"Now we have five."

Later, when Ted was driving her back to Westchester, Jean said, "They rescue cats."

"What?"

"They rescue cats. Barb and Randy. That's how they met. Rescuing cats." She paused, then added, "They have something together, something that binds them. A mission. I think that's important."

He appeared thoughtful, but said only, "I guess."

* * *

><p>"It's going to be okay."<p>

"I don't know, I don't know, I don't know . . . Oh, God, I'm never going to get this done!"

"Jean, stop it." Hank slipped big arms around her, pulling her in close to hug her tight, and hold her still so she'd quit wringing her hands and panicking. "Listen to me. Bruce is going to talk to McMasters. He won't let the bastard ruin this for you. Bruce and I have both double-checked your parameters and results, and _we_ have no problems with them."

In fact, Bruce had told Hank privately that he'd do whatever it took to make McMasters sign off on Jean's dissertation. It infuriated him to have a colleague take a personal quarrel into the arena of teaching; McMasters wanted to force the younger but more celebrated Banner to owe him a favor. Hank himself hadn't been required to deal with McMasters, as his own work lay in the direction of biochemistry and molecular genetics, but Jean's interest in multigenic inheritance mapping had left her with few choices to fill out her defense committee. Hank himself could serve only as an external expert since he wasn't on the Columbia faculty. From the department, she needed Bruce Banner, the new guy Phil Lacey, and Professor Emeritus Jonathan McMasters, with his Scottish accent, love of golf, Cambridge airs, and over two hundred articles in refereed journals. And an attitude as deep as Loch Ness.

Pushing free after a minute, Jean turned around once in the space of her little office in the mansion basement, as if she weren't quite sure where she was. Books were strewn everywhere, and computer paper, and copies of her manuscript. "A multifactorial inheritance hypothesis for the etiology of Homo superior: the genetic/environmental interactions leading to the activation of the x factor gene." There must be a rule somewhere, Hank thought, that dissertations in the hard sciences required a least twenty-word titles. His own had been just as bad. The desk held her laptop, her notebook, a calculator, stray slides, three coffee mugs, a plate with left over crumbs, a staple-gun, tape, an incense burner and incense, a stack of CDs, and a small ghetto blaster from which strains of Sheryl Crow drifted. Blunt, hard music.

_We got loud guitars and big suspicions, great big guns and small ambitions, and we still argue over who is God. And I say, 'Hey there, Miscreation, bring a flower, time is wasting.' It's hard to make a stand, it's hard to make a stand . . . .  
><em>

"Has Scott sent any more limericks?" Hank asked her. Scott and his roommate had been writing alternately morbid or lewd limericks about Jonathan McMasters every few days.

Now, she turned to look at him. Her hair was falling out of its clip, scraggly about her face, and she was too pale. But the question made her smile. "Yeah, he sent another last night. He and EJ are so wicked."

"But funny." And good for her, he thought.

She just grinned.

Later that afternoon, Banner called Hank McCoy to tell him that McMasters had agreed to sign the dissertation, but how Banner had obtained that promise, he wouldn't say. "It wasn't much." Hank doubted that. In any case, Jean finished up her final version and sent out copies, and the evening before the defense, Banner asked her, Ted, Hank and Phil Lacey over to dinner. As they sat about the dining table after the meal, plates bearing the remains of pasta pushed aside, they polished off three bottles of wine and talked. "I can't guarantee he won't grill you," Banner told Jean. "Hank, Phil and I have all agreed to tell you one question each that we'll ask tomorrow, so not everything will come as a surprise. And I can tell you to be prepared to field more questions from Jonathan about the controls you set for examining environmental triggers."

"He thinks most of it's bogus," Jean said, torn between bitterness and a gut-clenching fear that made her want to start hyperventilating. She took a long drink of wine. The wine was welcome, though she'd barely been able to touch her dinner. With her fingers, she pinched wrinkles in the tablecloth and didn't look at the rest of the men.

"If he goes after you too unfairly, Jean, be sure I'll put a stop to it," Banner told her. "This is my committee, not his."

She nodded. But when she got home, and despite all the wine they'd made her consume, she didn't sleep well. Three times, she rose to pad around the mansion halls aimlessly, her mind going over and over questions she might be asked, and how she would reply. At one's defense, one was supposed to be the expert of the day, but she knew all too well how much they could bring up that she couldn't answer.

On her third perambulation, she wandered into the den and sat down on the sofa, pulled an afghan over her legs to put off the chill, and tried distracting herself with television. She was still there at four, when the professor motored in. He wore a dressing gown and had two cups of tea on a tray. Smiling, she helped him move out of his chair to a place beside her on the couch, and he put an arm about her so she could lay her head on his bony shoulder, just as she had used to do when she'd been a young, coltish teen, new to her powers. He said nothing, not even in her mind, just patted her arm and drank his tea. After a while, she sat up and drank hers as well. The warmth settled in her belly and made her sleepy, and she stretched out on the couch, her head on a pillow in his lap. He stroked her hair until she fell asleep, and even she, with her latent telepathy, never felt the tiny tendrils slip into her mind, triggering the neurotransmitters in her brain to send her down into dreamland. When Ororo woke with the dawn as she usually did, she found them both in the den still - Jean with her head resting in the professor's lap, and Xavier leaning back against the couch top, snoring lightly. Shutting the door, she let them be, but kept an eye on the clock, to be sure that Jean woke in time to make her defense.

* * *

><p>The hallway smelled wet from all the melting winter slush tracked in, even sixteen stories up in the Hammer Center, and somewhere, a fluorescent light buzzed like an angry fly. The voices of secretaries could be heard when the main office door to the genetics department opened and closed, but Jean's attention was fixed on a different door, leading into the conference room.<p>

They were in there, the four of them, debating the rest of her career. They'd been in there twenty minutes already.

Dropping her head, her hair fell in front of her face, and she sighed. Ted shifted on the bench beside her. He'd stopped trying to cheer or distract her ten minutes ago. Now, his face was pulled into lines of mixed anger and concern as he leaned forward, elbows on his knees, one foot jiggling nervously. He glanced at his watch again; he'd been doing so every other minute. "It didn't go bad," he said now. "What's taking so fucking long?"

She didn't reply. He was right. It hadn't gone badly, but it hadn't gone as well as it might have. Just having McMasters in the room had thrown her off her stride, and she'd fumbled questions she wouldn't have otherwise. After an hour and a half, Banner had called a halt and sent her out with Ted, to wait while the committee deliberated.

"They're not going to turn you down, honey," Ted said. He'd said it at least six times already. "Banner-man wouldn't have let you walk in there if you weren't going to pass."

"Maybe," she said. But it wasn't his career on the line. Her own hands were clasped between her knees, skin winter pale in sharp contrast to the navy blue pantyhose she wore, to match her navy suit. She was fighting a compulsion to tap her heels together, like Dorothy. "There's no place like home, there's no place like home . . ."

The door opened and she almost jumped out of her skin, popping to her feet so fast she felt like a jill-in-the-box.

Bruce stood in the entrance with Hank behind him, and if Bruce's expression was schooled to neutral professionalism, Hank's grin told her the results. Banner held out a hand. "Congratulations, Ms. Grey," was all he said.

"Yeehaw!" Ted shouted behind her in an uncharacteristically exuberant explosion as Jean took Bruce Banner's hand in both hers.

"Thank you," she said, earnestly. "Thank you so much."

"You earned it, my dear. We don't give away doctorates here."

* * *

><p>"To Doctor Jean Grey!" Warren shouted, raising a glass of 18-year scotch.<p>

Jean blushed. "I'm not a doctor, yet, War. Not till I actually graduate. And I've got thirteen months of internship rotation hell to live through first."

"Don't argue with us, woman," Ted said, grinning at her from the seat beside hers and nudging her fondly. "Shut up and drink your liquor."

Smiling, she did as he ordered, and Warren poured her another. She'd been smiling since she'd been walked through the door, in fact, Ted's hands over her eyes as he'd guided her from behind to keep her from tripping. It was a small, exclusive Members-Only lounge not far from Warren's family penthouse, the sort of place that didn't card because anyone entering was either already well known there, or the guest of a member. The bar was to the immediate left behind highly polished wood and overhung with every size and shape of glass imaginable, and the room's decor included impressionistic paintings and plush seats in muted blues and maroons. In the back were two larger tables that Warren had reserved to throw Jean a party. Even underage Ororo and Frank were there, and little Bobby, having arrived with Warren and the professor to hang streamers and set up the cake. Angel Food. Warren's little joke. "Heaven after hell." _Congratulations, Dr. Grey_, had been written across the top.

What they would have done, had Jean failed to pass, no one had even discussed. But Hank did phone them immediately after, to inform them that all had gone well and Ted would be arriving with Jean shortly. Bruce Banner, Hank and Phil Lacey arrived by another car. No one had invited McMasters.

The party was both a celebration, and a bit of not-so-subtle strategy. They'd plotted to take Jean out, get her good and drunk, drive her home afterward, put her to bed and let her sleep off months of pent-up anxiety. But first there was cake to eat and toasts to make, and an extra surprise all the way from California.

Ororo was cutting cake. They'd forgotten to bring plastic forks, and tipsy from the scotch, Jean had started in on the cake with her fingers before Bobby could get back from the bar with utensils. Icing smeared her mouth and Warren snapped a picture while Frank set up a mini-TV with an internal VCR on a table end. He said, "Please direct your attentions to the silver screen . . ." Turning on the TV, he popped in a video.

It was black at first, then there commenced several seconds of camera shaking before the picture stabilized to show a lighted bar stage - but a very different kind of bar from the one they currently inhabited. This had a barely raised platform covered in cheap green Astroturf, brick walls behind, and a black-painted ceiling with playing cards stuck to it in random patterns. Scott and EJ's band had set up on the stage, Scott at the center and pacing around as he was wont to do. He'd finally splurged on a headphone unit so he wasn't trapped in one place, as he couldn't both play and hold a mic at once. That night, he was dressed all in white: white pants, white tanktop, and a white fedora on his head. "Mr. Snazzy," Ororo said, and Jean grinned.

"And now," he began in his best announcer voice. "I want to make a long-distance dedication. Think Casey Kasem here. Awaaaay off, in freezing cold New York, a good friend of mine is defending her dissertation in a week."

Jean put a hand over her face, shocked and embarrassed and pinkly-pleased all at once. This was obviously a real concert - he was sweating from the lights and the effort of previous performance - and he was talking to a live audience, a bunch of total stranger . . . about her.

"Now," Scott said, "she thinks she's going to blow it. But _I_ know she's not. What d'you think?"

Drunk and cheerful, the Berkeley audience was happy to roar and clap for someone they didn't know, and around the table in the Fifth Avenue lounge, there was laugher and a few good-natured shoves at Jean.

"Anyway, this next song is for her. 'Closer to Fine.' EJ's gonna help me out on vocals and we'll be the Indigo Boys."

_I'm trying to tell you something about my life_  
><em>Maybe give me insight between black and white. <em>_The best thing you've ever done for me_  
><em>Is to help me take my life less seriously, it's only life after all. <em>

_Well, darkness has a hunger that's insatiable,_  
><em>And lightness has a call that's hard to hear. <em>_I wrap my fear around me like a blanket_  
><em>I sailed my ship of safety till I sank it; I'm crawling on your shore. <em>

_I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains,_  
><em>I looked to the children, I drank from the fountain.<br>__There's more than one answer to these questions, pointing me in a crooked line.  
><em>_The less I seek my source for some definitive the closer I am to fine ..._

Tipsy and already prone to emotional display after having swung between too many extremes of late, Jean was sniffling and grinning at once. 

_I went to see the doctor of philosophy_  
><em>With a poster of Rasputin and a beard down to his knee.<br>__He never did marry, or see a B-grade movie. __He graded my performance, he said he could see through me.  
><em>_I spent four years prostrate to the higher mind, got my paper and I was free..._

When the song was done, Scott whispered, "I know you did fine, Jean." Then the video went to blue. Frank popped it out and passed it down to her, and wiping her eyes, she hugged it to her chest a moment before slipping it into her purse. She noticed neither the glance that Frank exchanged with Ororo, nor the frown on Ted Robert's face. If Ted had feared nothing from a then-nineteen-year-old boy when he'd first begun dating Jean, in the past year of their liaison, he'd heard entirely too much about Scott Summers to be sanguine, and was jealous of the special bond that Jean seemed to share with the younger man.

"I thought he had a girlfriend," he muttered now beneath his breath. "Doesn't she care that he's singing songs to another woman?"

Jean glanced at him. "I don't think Clarice is that petty." The comment was pointed. "Besides, she's EJ's sister."

"You mean the guy he was singing with - "

"Yes." Jean's eyes held his, daring him to comment on the color difference. He didn't. He just took a sip of scotch. She ought to know him better than to think he'd be racist just because he was from the South, and it depressed him that, after a year, she still would make that assumption. Couldn't he be surprised by the uncommon without it mattering beyond that?

Warren fed Jean five more shots of scotch, and by the time she left, she was giggling like a schoolgirl, her hair down and curled about her flushed face. Ted half-carried her to his car and put her in the passenger seat, buckling her seatbelt and debating with himself. The original plan had been to take her back to the mansion, but God knew, he hadn't seen much of her since before Christmas. He didn't resent that; next year, it would be him. But he'd missed her all the same, and he'd begun to ask himself some uncomfortable questions, too, about where this relationship was headed. Walking around the car front, he got behind the wheel and put his keys in the ignition. "Honey, let's go back to my place. Just for tonight."

At that, she sat up and blinked dimly, wiping hair out of her face. "Ted, I don't know. I'm so tired."

Bending across the space between them, he kissed her. They'd parked in a little garage not far from the lounge, and there was no one else around to see. She accepted the kiss more than participated, and he pulled back. "What is it?"

"Nothing." But she couldn't look him in the eye. She was staring out her window.

"Jean - "

"Ted, don't. I'm tired. And pretty damn drunk." Her inebriated giggling had been replaced by a doe-eyed sadness made slightly vague from alcohol. "Too drunk for sex. Please take me home."

Clenching his jaw, he gripped the steering wheel and stared at it. He himself felt stone cold sober. He'd had one shot to toast her, but mindful of the fact that he had to drive her home, he'd passed on anything else. "We don't have to do anything tonight," he said softly, needing some kind of resolution, and he was still smarting a bit - though he disliked admitting it - over her reaction to that video. "I just want to wake up next to you. We haven't done that in months . . . "

"I know." But that was all she said.

"And?" He was starting to get angry.

"I just don't want to, Ted. I want to go home and sleep."

"You could sleep at my place as long as you want. I wouldn't wake you."

"I don't have a change of clothes."

"You could borrow something from me - a sweatshirt and pants."

"_Goddammit!_" she yelled suddenly, taking him entirely by surprise. "You always have to _push_, don't you? You always fucking _push_. You can't take 'no' for an answer! You want the truth? All right - I don't want to go back to your place. I don't want to sleep with you. I don't want to wake up next to you. And I fucking do not want to fuck you! Are we clear?"

Then immediately horrified by what she'd just said, she slapped a hand over her mouth, staring at him in surprise as he tried to shut his gaping mouth. Turning, she jerked at her door handle and unbuckled her seatbelt at once. Getting the door open, she swung it into the side of the car parked beside theirs - hard - and stumbled out, falling to her knees on concrete. Her purse slid from her grip, skidding halfway beneath the other car. "What are you doing?" he asked, but his heart wasn't in it. His heart was shrinking in on itself, folding up like a flower at dusk.

She was crying and fumbling awkwardly for her purse. "I'm sorry," she said over and over. "I'm sorry. This wasn't how I meant to do it. It wasn't. I'm such a bitch. You've been nothing but kind to me, but I don't love you, Ted. I don't love you and I'm not going to love you and I'm a bitch to have kept you this long. I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sorry."

It was a drunken ramble but the meaning was clear enough. She was breaking up with him. Intellectually, he recognized it, even while he couldn't quite feel it yet. She was doing enough crying for them both, but he thought it more for guilt than sorrow. "I'm too drunk," she said, having retrieved her purse. "I guess I had to be drunk, though, to get it out. I don't know why I can't love you, Ted. I don't know if I can love anyone. It's all up in my brain. I think everything to death. I'm not a woman. I'm just a big, fat, walking _brain_." He'd rarely heard her sound so furious, but it wasn't directed at him. Sobbing now, she began to assault his car door, kicking it in fury. For someone who claimed not to feel, she was pitching an astonishing temper tantrum. "I hate it, I hate it, I hate it! I hate how I am!"

Then she slammed the door and stalked off, weaving across the parking lot, and he didn't know what to do. Get out and follow the person who'd just stomped on his heart with her size-nine high-heeled shoe, or leave her to todder about a New York City parking garage, drunk and alone? Even on Fifth Avenue, that wasn't safe. Reaching into his suit jacket, he pulled out his cell phone and exited the car, calling Hank even as he followed her across the lot, not trying to catch up to her, just keeping an eye out. He told Hank where they were, and asked if he had room in his car to come get her. When Hank asked what had happened, Ted replied, "I don't want to talk about it. Just come get her before she gets herself mugged."

She finally came to a halt against a concrete piling and sat down on the dusty floor. He stood at a distance and watched, frozen cold inside. She didn't look beautiful or classy now. She looked like what she was - a crying drunk, pale skin splotchy, hair a mess, her makeup smeared. Rather pathetic, really. He knew that thought was cruel, but couldn't help it. She'd sliced him deeply, and like a fresh cut from any sharp blade, he didn't feel it yet, but knew that when he did, it would ache like hell.

Hank mustn't have driven far, as he arrived back at the garage less than ten minutes after Ted had phoned. Pulling up beside Jean, he and Bruce Banner got out to lift her off the concrete and put her in the back seat. Hank glanced once at Ted, but seeing Jean taken care of, Ted had turned on his heel. Without acknowledgment, he walked back to his car.

Jean sobbed all the way back to Columbia, where Hank let out Bruce. Phil Lacey had returned in another vehicle, and Jean was grateful that he wasn't present to see the self-destruction of the grad student whose dissertation he'd just passed. Banner leaned in to peer at her where she was stretched out across the rear seat. "Jean - ?"

"I'll be okay. It's not me you should worry about." She couldn't look at him.

"I'll take care of her," she heard Hank say, and then the slam of the door, and the car was moving again. Silence reigned for a few minutes, but Jean knew Hank could never leave it alone. "You want to talk about it?"

"No."

"I take it you broke up with Ted?"

"Yes."

Silence for a good dozen streets. "Was it planned? I mean, to break up with him tonight?"

Furious again, but more at herself than at him, she pushed herself up. "No, Hank! It was not planned for me to break up with the guy who's been as patient as Job while I finished this goddamn dissertation, on the very night that I defended it! But that's what everyone will see and think, isn't it? Jean the bitch! Jean the user!" She sank back against the seat. "Maybe they're right. Scott was right. I should have broken up with him back in January."

Politely, Hank refrained from agreeing. There was no use in shutting the barn door once the cows had escaped. "So how did it happen?"

"He wanted me to go back to his place. I didn't want to, and I'm just . . . too far gone tonight to pretend. I was afraid I'd say something that gave me away." Then she began to laugh. "And I did, didn't I? But God, he just kept pushing and pushing, and I got angry because he wouldn't leave it alone. He said that he only wanted to wake up next to me but I know he'd want more than that, and - " She stopped abruptly, not wanting to discuss her sex life - or lack of sex life - with Henry McCoy. She and Ted had, eventually, gotten past fumbling under clothes in back rooms, but their sex had never been good. At least not for her. She'd always found foreplay more satisfying than sex, and had looked for as many excuses as possible to bring Ted to climax early. When that had failed, she'd gritted her teeth and thought of England, or at least of how nice he was to her, and how very, very different he was from the men she'd known at Vanderbilt.

"What's wrong with me," she asked Hank now, her voice small and quiet and slurred, "that I couldn't love him? He was never unkind. I enjoyed being with him, mostly. Especially at first."

Henry McCoy was silent a long while as he considered that. Now that she was no longer with Ted Roberts, he could be more gracious. "Love isn't something you can make happen, Jean. Or shut off, either. Sometimes it's there, sometimes not, but it doesn't necessarily make sense. You cared about him."

She nodded. "Yes, I cared about him, but I let it get out of hand. Because I was a coward. It's funny. You wind up hurting someone by trying not to hurt them. I did the same thing to Scott."

He looked in the rearview mirror at her. They were passing Trinity Cemetery with its great oaks and elms and neatly trimmed walkways, a green jewel set amid concrete and steel. "Scott recovered," Hank said. "He has a girlfriend, and it seems serious. Ted will recover, too."

"Scott was nineteen, Hank - too young for me, and he knew it. I never encouraged him, much less dated him. Ted's a little older, and I went out with him for a year."

"Did you give him any promises?"

"No. Never." She hadn't even said the L-word, but she wondered what was wrong with her, that she couldn't love a good man who loved her. Was she the Tinwoman? "I still hurt them both." Hank didn't reply to that.

* * *

><p>Done with her dissertation and lab research, there was no cause for Jean to see Ted Roberts, and ashamed, she avoided him. Once, she plucked up courage enough to call him when she knew he'd be out, leaving a message on his answering machine to apologize in circular sentences full of discursive phrases, for how it had ended. "I know it sounds like a bad line," she finished, "but you deserve better than me, Ted. You deserve someone who's not emotionally crippled." And she hung up. Maybe he'd listen to it, or maybe he'd erase it at the first sound of her voice, but at least she'd done something.<p>

Thus marginally eased in conscience, she embarked on the final stage of her student career before graduation and residency - her thirteen-month clinical rotations. Only one week into them, Frank phoned her from the mansion to say that Scott's girl had broken up with him. Still smarting from her own newly defunct relationship, she called California as soon as she could get a break in her daily schedule.

"Hey, Boy-o," she said when he answered. "I heard what happened with Clarice. You okay?"

"I guess. As okay as can be expected. I'm not thinking about slitting my wrists or anything, if that's what you mean."

"Well, I should hope not!"

Then she winced. She shouldn't make light of it, even if he was trying to. He'd been devoted to this girl. Warren had said, "When we were at the mall before Christmas, he was looking at rings in jewelry-store windows." It didn't get much more serious than that.

Now, she said softly into the phone, "Can I do anything?" And she listened to his breath sigh out, then hitch once, twice. He was _crying_. "Oh, Scott . . ."

"Sorry, I didn't mean - "

"Don't be." And a sudden rush of anger replaced her discomfort. "She is . . . incredibly stupid . . . for letting you go."

"Jean, please. Don't be mad at Clarice. It hurts like hell, but the breakup was pretty much mutual. It wasn't working and we both knew it. I just didn't want to see it."

"What wasn't working about it? Do you want to talk?"

She could hear him draw in breath as if to refuse automatically, then he paused and finally said, "It wasn't that we didn't love each other. But what she wants to do with her life, what she _needs_ to do, and what I need, don't mesh well. And it was getting too intense to keep going like it was. Sometimes you date someone because you enjoy her company, but you know it won't ever be more than that. But sometimes, you think it might be the real thing. I thought this might be the real thing." His voice trembled and he paused, then said, "Shit. I've been like this since Friday. I've gotta get a grip. I can't study, I can't concentrate on class or papers. I'm a mess. She's no better."

"You're talking to her?" Jean was astonished.

"A little. Like I said, it hurts like hell, but we both knew it was coming."

"Scott, you told me once that you were just a guy, not a gentleman, and couldn't always control how you felt - and sometimes you felt angry. That was honest. I confess, it hurt at the time, but I understood. Now I hear you playing the gentleman again."

"_Stop it!_" he snapped. "Just stop, dammit. Don't psychoanalyze me." She could hear him breathing, then he said, "Look, I'm trying incredibly hard not to hate her. It would be so easy. And it'd be wrong. Right now, I _need_ to be a gentleman, okay? Just to keep my head together and to keep from acting like an asshole. We're still in love with each other, but it's not going to work. Sometimes it doesn't. And that just . . . really, really hurts. It hurts so bad . . ." He stopped again because he'd lost his voice. "She's hurting, too," he whispered finally. "When we broke up . . . when she left the apartment after . . . she was crying so hard she almost fell down the goddamn stairs. I had to call DeeDee to come get her, to drive her home. That was Friday, this is Monday, and Dee told me she didn't even get to class today. At least I made it to class. She's not the bitch here, okay? She's just the one who actually had the guts to sing us Taps."

And Jean had no idea how to respond to that. Her feelings for Ted had never come close to this magnitude of intensity, and she was struck by the enormous difference between how Scott was reacting to losing Clarice, and how he'd reacted a year before, to her dating Ted. He didn't sound like a boy anymore, or like a mockery of a gentleman. He sounded like a man who was in pain, yet who'd grown up enough to realize that someone else was hurting, too.

"I'm sorry," she said, again. "You're right. It's easy to blame. It's just that you're my friend and I've never met Clarice, and when I know you're hurting this badly, it makes me want to go after the person who did it to you."

That got a little laugh, and a "Thanks" amid covert sniffles.

"Speaking of people caught in the middle," she said, "How's EJ. How is this affecting you two?"

"We're okay. He's seen the whole thing go down, and he and DeeDee have sorta been running interference, and Lee, too, for that matter. Clarice and Lee got to be friends. Like I said, we're not mad at each other, Clarie and I. I want to know how she is, and the reverse, even if we're not ready to see each other yet. We'll all live through it, I think. It'll just take time. It's probably good the summer is coming, so we can be away from each other a little. I think we'll be okay by fall. We can be friends again."

"Are you sure that's going to work? That you can be friends?"

"I don't know, but we'll try. We've got too many people in common, and hey, it worked with you and me, didn't it? Not that we were dating, but - "

"Scott, that's just it. We weren't dating. How are you going to deal with it, when she starts seeing someone else? Or how will she feel when you do?"

"I don't know." The words were sharp. "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. I'm not even up to _thinking_ about dating, and neither is she." He sighed. "Sorry, I didn't mean to snap."

"It's all right. I just don't want to see you play the martyr, or suppress what you're feeling because you think you ought to. You were right, to tell me you were angry a year ago."

He laughed at that. "I've got to suppress some of it, just so I can function. I don't have time to fall apart. It's the end of the semester and we've both got these terrible course loads. I'm managing, but I'm more worried about her, right now."

"Okay." She paused, racking her brain, but couldn't think of more to say. She wished she could be there with him, just to sit with him as the professor had sat with her before her defense, but he was three-thousand miles away, not downstairs, and even if Warren could fly her out there, taking a day or two off right now just wasn't feasible. She'd consigned herself to the fact that she'd eat, sleep and breathe the hospital for the next year, and could forget about a social life of any kind. Even now, she was due back in orthopedics in ten minutes. He didn't sound as if he were falling apart, so she said, "Listen, I have to go, but you call me if you need me - even if you just need to talk to someone who isn't in the middle out there, and who won't have to pick a side. I'm already on a side. Yours."

"Okay. Thanks." She could almost hear the smile in his voice. Even if he didn't want to speak against Clarice, she was sure that it helped him to know that he had a friend who wouldn't be emotionally torn if he wanted to gripe.

She hung up then and dumped the paper left on her tray into the trash bin before heading back to the ward. In the hallways, she brushed by people without quite seeing them - visitors, medical personnel, secretaries, support staff. In the elevator, she crossed her arms and leaned up against the steel wall, handrail pressing hard into the small of her back. She was getting angry again, just thinking about it - how dare Clarice Haight break up with Scott?

Then she shook her head at herself. She could hardly question the girl. She'd turned Scott down herself. But that had been different. He was eight years younger than she, yet she wondered what might have happened if he hadn't been? The question haunted her for the rest of the day.

* * *

><p>If Jean's summer sped by with her rotations, Scott's progressed quietly. As in the previous summer, he concentrated on schoolwork, added air-time to his flying, and worked out. He also kept up Mrs. Gale's yard. There was more to do in the summer, and only himself to do it. She fed him strawberry pie, iced tea, and kept an eye on him. With time, she'd grown rather fond of her two young tenants, and EJ's sister as well; and whatever private reservations her age and upbringing might have engendered in her regarding bi-racial relationships, she was a romantic at heart, and now pitied Scott. So she doted on him, hoping that enough grandmothering would ease his ache. He minded neither the pie nor the attention.<p>

Thus, a flowered May tumbled into a sunlit June, followed by a heat-heavy July, and finally the slow crawl of August towards the beginning of the fall semester and Scott Summers' third year at Berkeley. If he continued to carry a heavy course load, he'd graduate at the end of next August. But what he'd do after that, he wasn't entirely sure. Aside from his math courses, he spent that summer hanging around the anthropology department. The previous spring, he'd made friends with the young professor who'd taught his introduction to cultural anthropology course, and that summer, he took The World of the Ancient Maya from the same man. By the end, he'd reached a difficult cross-roads.

Should he return to Westchester and become a math teacher for Xavier, because it might be needed in a future that hadn't arrived yet? Or should he change his major to pursue his real love: ancient engineering? Duty pulled him one way, while his interests lured him in another. So, torn, he rented a plane and made his first extended solo flight back to New York during the two-week break between summer and fall. How easy it was to heed the siren call of a subject taught by an enthusiastic professor, but like a salmon swimming upstream, it was time to return home and remind himself who he was.

His timing was unfortunate, however, and his mutant family scattered. Warren had gone to Tokyo, apprenticing under his father before taking over as CEO of some of the smaller Worthington investment holdings. Valeria and Francesco had returned to Geneva for August Holiday with Valeria's sister, and Ororo had gone with them. Jean, of course, more or less lived at Columbia's teaching hospital, and even Bobby was back in Allentown for a quiet visit, now that all the hoopla surrounding his manifestation had died down.

That left Scott, Hank and the professor. Hank taught Scott how to use the new power training center in the sub-basement, which everyone had taken to calling just "the Danger Room," and Scott discovered that karate lessons weren't much use against some of Reed Richards' more vicious surprises. Apart, he and Hank were vulnerable - Hank, because his exceptional strength and agility could be used offensively only at close range, and Scott because he found targeting with his optic blasts far easier at a distance. But when they combined their talents, they could sometimes defeat the room, rather than be spanked by it.

"There are days," Hank said one afternoon as they were showering in the locker room after a particularly grueling session, "that I question the point of all this. Despite what Frank has said, I have not, myself, observed the hostility towards mutants that he insists is just on the horizon. There hasn't been a peep in the media about mutants since Christmas. If the populace were indeed inclined towards paranoia, one would think some outcry would already be evident."

After his own experiences at Berkeley, Scott was inclined to agree. In the past year, he'd grown less cagey about the real reason he wore shades. Later, he'd realize that much of the nonchalance he experienced there owed to a combination of the newness of mutations, the generally tolerant atmosphere at Berkeley, and the reactions of the first people he'd told. Quite simply, EJ and his other friends had regarded his power as an interesting novelty, not a potential threat, and so when others were first informed of it, they copied that blasé attitude. If no one else seemed concerned, why should they be?

"I don't know what to think," he said now to Henry. "I trust Frank. But yeah - if there's going to be trouble, I'm starting to think it won't happen for a while."

Thus, Scott's original incentive for a quick return to Westchester after college, and the urgency instilled in them all by Frank's Cerebro vision, had begun to fade. But he didn't speak to Xavier about his vocational doubts yet. The professor knew of them, of course, but chose to let the matter lie. Scott would speak when he was ready, and it was a decision that the boy had to make for himself. Xavier wouldn't hold him in Westchester, if his path led elsewhere. And so Scott returned for his third and final year as an undergrad with no more clarity of purpose than he'd had when he'd left. If storm clouds were already brewing in boardrooms and private offices around the nation, they lay beyond his immediate horizon. His greatest worry, as 1999 rolled into its final months, was personal: his pending meeting with the girl who'd broken his heart. If that wound had scabbed over, it was ugly still, and tender. But he decided to make the best of it.

Clarice felt the same, and their initial encounter, while awkward, was also blessedly unremarkable. Clarice came to dinner with Diane, and Lee and Rick as well. EJ cooked. It made a large enough crowd that the former couple wasn't forced to rub constant elbows, but everyone present knew the details of the previous spring and no pretending was necessary. After that, contact between them grew easier, though it would be some months before they were able to converse with ease.

With the new school year, band practices started up again, and Soapbox's local reputation had grown sufficiently that they had gigs scheduled nearly every weekend. They adopted signature Hawaiian shirts, and decided to cut a demo CD for marketing purposes. They also had their own exclusive - and occasionally importunate - groupies.

"Christ, if Tambourine Girl shows up again, I say we trip her on a guitar chord."

"LeeLee could try hiding the damn _tambourine_."

"I need it!"

"Well, lock it up _until_ you need it!"

The four of them were eating grease from Taco Bell on the dock of Forrester's Boat Rentals before loading their equipment to make a Saturday night gig in late October. Ever since Scott and EJ had vacated the dorms, practice sessions had been held at Lee's, in an old equipment shed. It was dim, and poorly insulated, making it as cold as a witch's tit in winter, but there weren't any neighbors to complain about the noise, and rehearsing there meant that Lee didn't have to haul, set up, and take down her trap for every practice, as well as gigs.

"I hate floor stages," Rick said. "When you're on the floor, people just walk up and get in your face. If the stage is raised a little, that don't happen."

"As much," Scott qualified. "But at least they don't try to take the mic out of _your_ hands."

"Oh, man! That chick was just plain _bad_." EJ wadded up his second burrito wrapper and dropped it in the trash bag. "There's off-key and then there's completely _atonal_. But let's roll, kids. Time to go play for our supper."

That night's gig was in a basement pub called Wicked Jig's, located beneath a package store. It catered to a less upscale crowd, or college students out slumming. The stage was raised, if not by much, yet the room was strangely configured - long and narrow, with a row of dartboards at the back by the john, two pool tables under light fixtures advertising Budweiser, and a dance floor. They'd played there twice before. Scott despised the place. "Check, check, check, check, check . . ." he said into his headphone mic during set up, wincing in anticipation of the loud squeal of feedback he knew was coming. EJ dove to adjust the soundboard as Scott ripped off the headmic, muttering, "I fucking hate this room."

On the stage beside him, Rick had bent to set up his effects box, a row of six little stomp switches that modulated his sound from grunge to stereo phaser. "Well, what d'you expect? It's got low ceilings and the walls are concrete block. You're the engineer-wannabe, man. You figure it out."

"I know. And that's why I hate the room."

"Bitch, bitch, bitch," Lee said from behind, as she set her sticks in easy reach on the top of the big bass drums, then tapped the peddle trigger for her tophat. "They _pay_ well." Cymbals clapped once like a dull exclamation point. "And it'll be better once there are some bodies in here."

"It still sucks eggs." Scott put on the headmic to try again. "Check, check, check . . ." No feedback greeted him. "Better, Eeej. But can you still hear me well enough to make out words?"

"I think the mic'll be fine," EJ called from the board, "but play something, guys. I ain't sure I got the bass track set high enough, and LeeLee is set way too high."

"Nobody respects the drummer," Lee said, but the three of them started up a blues riff while EJ scooted back and forth, adjusting monitors and mics and soundboard settings. Typically, Clarice ran the board, but she and Diane had a BBWS meeting that night, and she attended fewer gigs these days, in any case. It wasn't, entirely, to avoid Scott, but it did leave the band on their own in bars without built-in sound systems. Adjustments made, EJ went upstairs to talk to the manager, and when he came back, fifteen minutes later, they were still going on the riff.

"Man, you guys are _stuck_ in A-minor! The Kings of Inertia." He hopped up on the stage. "Can we do something _else_?"

So Scott took off on a walking bass-line in C-minor. _Thump-da-da-dump, da-da-dump, da-da-dump. Thump-da-da-dump, da-da-dump, da-da-dump. _Grinning, Rick picked up the lead and Lee followed him in. When EJ rolled his eyes, Scott protested, "Hey! It's not in A-minor!" Then he sang, "_Ooo, ooo, ooo - ooo. __Ooo, ooo, ooo - ooo. _I . . . think I'm gonna need my hat." It made the other three laugh.

_"Black-and-orange stray cat sittin' on a fence,_  
><em>Ain't got enough dough to pay the rent. <em>_I'm flat broke - but I don't care! _  
><em>I strut right by with my tail in the air. <em>

_"Stray cat strut, I'm a ... (ladies cat)_  
><em>Feline Casanova ... (hey, man, that's that)<em>  
><em>Get a shoe thrown at me from a mean ole man<em>  
><em>Get my dinner from a garbage can ... <em>

_"Meow ..."_

Finished at last with the song and the sound check, and with a few hours to kill, they went out for a walk on Telegraph Avenue until time for the first set. When they returned, their groupies were already in attendance at a front table, left of the stage. Even though it wasn't quite ten o'clock, the girls were well on the way to a boisterous, drunken enthusiasm.

"Great," Scott muttered to Lee as he picked up his Steinberger from its stand and plopped his fedora (fetched from Lee's van) on his head. "Hide the tambourine."

They started with "Stray Cat Strut," then moved on to their own material; these days, they were popular enough to get away with only a few covers on the playlist. The groupies stayed on the floor, and there were no tambourine wars. Four girls were regulars, but on this particular night, there were nine altogether, the other five apparently friends. From the dance floor, they flirted with Scott and EJ. Rick had a girl, and Lee was a girl, so neither had ever encouraged the interest of the groupies, who focused their energy in the direction it was most likely to pay off.

One of the girls seemed particularly interested in Scott, moving right up to the edge of the stage and watching him play and sing. She wore low-slung jeans and a white silk tank under a shirt of some indeterminate shade - blue or green or purple, he couldn't guess in the darkness. When one of the overhead spots hit her just right, he could see a hint of dark nipples through white silk. Her hair was dyed blond, which wasn't his preference, but it was nice hair, and she had a wide smile in a long face that might have been called horsy, if she'd been less attractive. After the first set, he hung about the stage, fiddling with nothing, in case she approached - which she didn't, at least, not until he went to the bar for some water. Glass in hand, he turned only to find her right there, nose to nose, and it made him start and spill liquid on his hand. He used wiping it off as an excuse to step back a bit, but she followed, as if personal space held no meaning in her vocabulary. She smelled of perfume, alcohol, and cigarettes. "You're good," she said. "I'm Pam."

"Thanks. I'm Scott."

"Yeah, I know."

And she said nothing else, just stared at him expectantly. He had no idea what she expected. "You a student?" he asked, fishing.

"Yeah. But not at Berkeley."

"Oh. Where?"

"Samuel Merritt in Oakland." A local nursing college.

"Ah. I'm a math major. You know - across the street." He thumbed in the campus' direction.

She didn't reply, just kept staring at him. Bemused and growing increasingly uncomfortable, he scratched the bridge of his nose and gestured to the stage with his elbow. "I, ah, better get back. I was having some trouble with my equalizer. I need to check it." He was lying through his teeth.

"Okay. See you."

"Later."

He slipped away, and she didn't follow, but all through the second set, she stood in front of his position on the stage, dancing in an obviously provocative fashion. He was half aroused and half put off, and in the second break, EJ said to him, "That chick has her sights set on you, Slimboy. Be nice, and you might get some action. I saw you talking to her after the first set."

"Oh, yeah, she's just a _scintillating_ conversationalist."

EJ grinned. "That sarcasm, I hear?"

"She either gives new meaning to 'dumb blonde' or all the lights are _not_ on upstairs. Or both. She creeps me out." He unslung the strap and set the bass in its stand. "I'm going outside for some air. The smoke's getting to my throat."

"You hoping she will or won't follow?"

"Fuck you," Scott said, slapping at EJ in fun and exiting the stage on the opposite side of the girls' table. Eeling his way through the packed, sweaty crowd, he headed for the stairs that led up into a cool October night. The twenty-seventh, four days from his twenty-first birthday, though he disliked admitting that he'd been born on Halloween. For a mutant, there was something _too_ ironic in that. Outside, packs of students ambled along Telegraph, some wearing costumes for weekend parties. The Fruit-of-the-Loom Guys were the most original that he saw, one big red apple made from a box, and two sets of grapes swathed in masses of green or purple balloons.

He considered going for a walk, but didn't feel up to it, so he headed for Lee's van and slipped into the back, flinging his hat on a rear seat and collapsing beside it, knees akimbo, eyes shut, and breath heavy. He was tired, and maybe he dozed off for a moment because he didn't hear her approach, though the crunch of gravel under heels should've alerted him. When she said, "Hi," at the van's still-open side door, he nearly jumped out of his skin.

"Uh - hi, Pam."

"Can I come in?"

He shrugged and she took that for acquiescence, climbing inside. Her hair was loose and brushed her shoulders, and she smiled as she sat down beside him on the bench seat. He had to move his hat, to make room, and said, "I've gotta go back soon," not liking this feeling of being trapped.

"Maybe I'll see you after?"

"Maybe." _Not_, he finished silently.

Still smiling, she leaned closer, as if trying to peer through the glasses and find his eyes, paralyzing him before striking, like a cobra. Then she kissed him hard on the mouth. It startled him, though perhaps it shouldn't have. Her lips were soft and she was a good kisser, but this was all too forward for his tastes, and to shock him even further, her hand was busy between his legs. He couldn't decide if the whole thing were funny, or merely surreal, but his body had taken an unseemly interest.

"Look," he said, pushing her back. "I've really got to get back in."

"Uh-huh."

She returned to kissing him and her hand hadn't stopped playing with his pants, until, with a deft twist and a yank, she got the fly open to worm her fingers inside the waistband of his briefs. Annoyed, physically excited, and embarrassed all at once, he turned his head to the side and said, "Come on - stop it!" The overwhelming smell of her perfume was giving him a headache. Some cheap, acidic musk.

"Doesn't feel like you want me to stop." She was laughing, her eyes heavy-lidded from alcohol and lust. Gripping his cock, she pumped it as best she could, and he was so shocked by this whole turn of events that his mind stuttered about for a response while she slipped off the seat to wedge herself awkwardly between his knees, her back bumping the rear of the van seat in front of him. "Here's a little taste of what I'll give you later, if you wait around for me." Pushing him back with one hand and pulling his cock through the front of his skivvies with the other, she bent her bottle-blonde head over his lap to take him in her mouth.

_Holy Jesus_, he thought, arching off the seat instinctively. His body was reacting, but that was just a physiological response. His mind had frozen into dumbfounded disbelief. This sort of thing happened only in fantasies and boasts, yet here he was, being sucked off by a pretty girl in the back of Lee's van. Had it been a fantasy, though, the van door wouldn't have been wide open to give a free show to anyone who happened by, and she'd be good with her mouth - which she wasn't. She drooled on him, leaving a wet spot on his briefs, and worse, the edge of her teeth kept dragging along the sensitive rim of his cock head, almost sending him through the van roof.

"Good God!" he shouted finally, finding his voice and shoving her off while he backed away along the seat, one hand fumbling at his fly to tuck himself back in and zip up. "What in hell are you doing?" He didn't feel excited. He felt incredibly disconcerted. "Get out of here! Just get the fuck out of here!"

Her long face fell and she seemed ready to cry as she wiped at her mouth. Later, he'd recall that expression and feel badly for the harshness of his words, but in the midst of his agitation, he was too angry and distressed to think about why she might have thrown herself at him with such frenetic abandon. "You don't want me to - ?"

"No! I barely know you! Get out of the goddamn van and stay away from me!"

She slunk away while he sat there a moment, his back against the van's side, still trying to zip up his pants but unable to make his hands accomplish even that simple task. Now that she was gone, he'd started to shake, and wasn't sure why. He certainly hadn't been scared of her. But unnerved? Yes. She'd unnerved him. "Jesus H. Christ on a pogo stick," he muttered to himself because his hands were still shaking and he had to go in there and finish the final set for the night. But he finally got his shirt tucked in and his pants zipped up and did what he had to do. The girl, Pam, was nowhere to be seen, thankfully. He wasn't sure he could've managed to go on, if she had been, and while he supposed that someday he might look back on this experience and laugh at the total absurdity of it, just then, he wanted only to go home and take a long, hot shower.

EJ picked up that something was wrong. "You okay?" he asked, as he settled himself behind his keyboards.

"Yeah," Scott said. "Yeah."

But EJ knew better; Scott's final performance was off. While Scott made no glaring errors, it was clear that he was neither on top of his timing nor of his stage presentation, and after the set, while they broke down and packed up to leave, EJ tried to draw out Scott again - to no avail.

This, EJ thought, was the downside of having one's best friend date one's sister. What he valued most about their friendship wasn't that they had self-revelatory conversations on a regular basis. They had esoteric debates on a regular basis, but mostly, they just hung out. What he valued most was the knowledge that they _could_ have self-revelatory conversations on the rare occasions they needed to. Or at least, they'd had them until Scott had begun seeing Clarie. Then things had grown complicated. That reticence had lifted somewhat after the breakup, but it was still there, and it kept EJ from pushing Scott for details, where once, he might have done so.

And Scott said nothing because he couldn't pinpoint why he was so agitated. Hours later, and back in the familiar environment of his own bedroom, he felt guilty for having been so rude to the girl, but he'd let his distress dictate his reaction. And that very distress confused him. Shouldn't he have leapt at a chance for unrestricted sex? It wasn't as if he'd had any other outlet since the spring, and the memory of what had occurred in the van - the intimate sensation of a woman's mouth on his penis - now made him harder than he'd been at the time. Before Clarice, he'd experienced fellatio only twice, and Clarice herself hadn't liked it for a variety of reasons, the concept being wrapped about with a different set of connotations for a black woman than a white man. And while she'd granted it a time or two, he'd always been mindful of the concessive nature - she'd done it for love, not interest - and that had made it difficult for him to enjoy. Or at least, it had made him feel guilty for enjoying it.

Yet tonight, a complete stranger had been willing and eager. And he'd sent her away. It was only in retrospect - the perversity of a mnemonic curiosity - that it excited him. At the time, he'd been repelled, in part because he'd felt so out of control. And _he didn't like that_.

After tossing and turning in bed almost until sunrise, he gave up and rose, padding out of his bedroom into the kitchen to make himself a sandwich. He ate it, then crashed on the old velour couch to flip TV channels on the remote, a blanket thrown over his bare legs. He'd been trying to be quiet, but his movements must have woken EJ anyway. Opening the door to his own room, EJ stumbled out, still half asleep and rubbing his face. He walked by the TV and hit the off switch manually, then dropped into the beanbag chair. "Okay - spill, Slim. What went down tonight?"

Scott stared at his blanket-covered knees for a while, gathering his thoughts. Like EJ, he, too, had been missing the closeness they'd had their first year, but hadn't been sure how to resuscitate it. Still looking at the blanket, he said finally, "Would you believe me if I told you that blonde chick you saw me talking to at Wicked Jig's tried to blow me in Lee's van after the second set?"

Dead silence for two beats, then he heard the dry rustle of EJ's body sitting up straight on the beanbag. "Whoa. Just . . . whoa. Are you shitting me?"

"Nope." And Scott told him what had happened.

"Seriously weird," EJ said when he was done. "_Seriously_ weird."

Embarrassed, Scott laughed a little. "Yeah, it's like something out of _Spinal Tap_. I mean, that stuff doesn't really happen - I don't think."

EJ laughed. "Not to most of us! You got lucky, man!"

Scott rolled one shoulder in dubious agreement, then raised his eyes behind the shades. "That's just it. I mean, I could have gotten lucky. But I told her to get lost." He paused a beat. "You think I was nuts to do that?"

"No." The answer came unhesitatingly. "I'd probably have done the same thing. It's damn freaky."

Scott nodded, accepting the gift of that personal disclosure. "I was pretty rude to her, but like you said, it was freaky. I have to wonder, though, about the way she put it - that it was a taste of what she'd give me later if I waited for her. That is _so_ a crappy line, but it bugs me that she thought she had to give me sex to get me to go out with her. I probably wouldn't have anyway - she was a little too weird - but it still bugs me. I _know_ girls do that, give out sex to get affection. It's, like, classic." With an internal wince, his mind brushed past the memory of Phoebe. "But it was just so . . . blunt. I shouldn't have been mean to her like that."

"Hey," EJ said, and Scott looked up. "It wasn't the best situation to keep a cool head."

"Yeah."

"Quit kicking yourself, man."

"Okay."

"Slim - I mean it."

Scott laughed. "Okay, _okay_, already!"

"Go to bed. So I can go to bed. I'm fucking tired."

"Yeah."

Scott went to bed. But he still wondered if he'd been sensible that night, or simply a nerd.

* * *

><p><strong>Notes:<strong> Siamese Rescue really exists. 'Closer to Fine' was written by Emily Saliers and can be found on the Indigo Girl's first (eponymous) album. The Hammer Building at Columbia is real enough, but obviously the department dynamics are fictitious. 'Stray Cat Strut' was written by Brian Seltzer and performed, of course, by The Stray Cats, but you won't find "Wicked Jig's" on Telegraph in Berkeley.


	13. Big Green

"Four, three, two, ONE - _whoo-hoo! _Happy New Year! _Happy New Year!_'

On the TV screen, the new Times Square Waterford crystal ball had descended seventy-seven feet to set off the flashing "2000" light display at the flagpole bottom. Balloons, streamers and confetti erupted skyward right along with fireworks and cheers from tens of thousands of throats packed into the square for this special - and frigid - New Year's Eve. In the mansion den, which was considerably warmer with a fire going, there were also cheers and noisemakers and balloons, but no confetti. No one wanted to vacuum up the carpet in the morning.

Fortunately, the celebration wasn't marred by any sudden loss of power or other dire disaster. "So much for Y2K!" Warren shouted. Scott had been saying the same thing for months, but doubt had remained in the minds of the rest of his adoptive-family.

Now, the professor raised his goblet in the midst of noisemakers and laughter. "Happy New Year, children. Let's hope for as much peace and quiet to come as we've enjoyed this last year."

"Amen!" Hank agreed, and they all raised their glasses in answer - Xavier, Hank, Jean, Warren, Ororo, Frank, Scott, and even young Bobby (who'd been allowed a little champagne). "To peace," Jean echoed, and they drank. Scott thought that Frank's expression appeared a bit troubled, but he said nothing aloud.

"Wow! This is like, so cool!" Bobby was saying. "It's, like, a whole new millennium!"

"Actually," Hank corrected, "the new millennium began either three or four years ago, depending on what argument one follows regarding the shift from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar. Thus, if one wishes to count back to the Year One - as there was no year zero - 2000 is actually 2003, or thereabouts. And even if that were not the case, the _new_ millennium would begin _next_ year - with 2001. 2000 would be the final year of the old millennium."

And the rest of them just broke up laughing. "What?" Hank asked. "I wasn't trying to be funny."

Jean, who stood beside him, set down her flute to slip both arms around one of his sizable biceps and hug tightly. "Hank, dear, we're laughing because you _would_ know all that, but . . . we really don't care!" Yet it was said fondly, and she grinned up at him. "Happy New Year, old friend!" and she stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek, then let him go to move over to Scott, saying softly, "Happy New Year to you, too." And she clinked her retrieved flute against his.

"Happy New Year," he replied, hugging her fiercely with his free arm. "I've missed you."

"I've missed you, too, boy-O. I'm glad we had tonight."

"Ditto." And he was indeed grateful for whatever bribe had secured her freedom on this most special of New Year's Eves. He'd talked to her more in the past six hours than he had in the last six months, and he chalked up the closeness of their hug now to simple pleasure in a renewed camaraderie. Finally, she released him to move on around the room, and he did the same. When he got to Xavier and bent to embrace the professor, Xavier sent, _You have something to tell me, Scott? _It was a question that wasn't a question. _You've been avoiding it, haven't you? _

Surprised - though he shouldn't have been - Scott pulled back. "Yes," he said softly. "But it can wait."

"It can wait, but not forever. Come see me sometime tomorrow."

Scott tensed, and reading that as clearly and easily as a flare, Xavier added, "I'm not angry, son, but we need to talk about your future." And then he turned away to exchange well wishes with Bobby.

Troubled, Scott moved back, and if he smiled at the others, he didn't feel so celebratory now; after half an hour, he found an excuse to retire to his bedroom. There, he tossed and turned for a while, twisting the sheets in an echo of his own confused thoughts. Finally, he slept.

The next morning, feeling both sluggish and nervous, he fetched a letter from his luggage and made his way downstairs. _I'm in the conservatory_, the professor sent. _I've been waiting for you to wake. Please join me. _

The mental message almost made Scott jump out of his skin, but he took a deep breath and headed in that direction. Memories floated up to the surface of his mind of another letter shown to another father four years ago. Both letters had involved a wish to follow a dream, yet the first had been perceived as a defiance, a betrayal, and that was the last impression he wanted to give this time.

Scott found Xavier sitting in a patch of sun, a blanket thrown over his useless legs. He was dressed casually, or more casually than usual, in a loose, dark sweater over a light turtleneck. His face was sad, but not disappointed, or angry, and he gestured to the bench near his chair. Feeling lightheaded and a little weak, Scott took it. His stomach, which had been roiling since he'd woken, now issued a nervous belch. It embarrassed him, and he flushed, but Xavier merely held out a hand for the letter and Scott turned it over to him.

_Educational Testing Service_ read the upper left-hand corner return address, with its distinctive oak leaf symbol. Slipping out the form, Xavier read the scores that ought to have been a cause for celebration, not Scott's shamefaced hesitation. "Verbal," he said aloud, "630, quantitative, 760, and analytical, 780." He glanced up and waved the paper. "You do realize these GREs will likely ensure you a graduate assistantship at all but the most competitive schools?"

Scott shrugged with one shoulder. That hadn't been quite the response that he'd expected. "That's what Fred said - Dr. Hand, in the anthropology department at Berkeley."

Xavier nodded. "So I take it that you've applied for the graduate program?"

Leaning over, elbows braced on his knees, Scott sighed. "Not yet. I just took the tests to see what my scores might be. Everybody in anthro is telling me I should apply, though. Well, not _everybody_, but you know." Xavier did know. Any graduate program would be happy to acquire a student of Scott's caliber.

"Are you going to apply, then?"

The boy looked away. "I don't know."

And he didn't. He still hadn't entirely made up his mind. It would mean abandoning his previous plans and he'd never considered himself flighty by nature, but was it flighty to recognize that the goals one had at eighteen might not be relevant at twenty-one? And yet, and yet, and yet . . . he felt that he owed Charles Xavier. The professor had put him through college, and pride made Scott view that kindness as a scholarship, not a charity - an education in return for service. Now, he was considering going back on the implied promise of service and his conscience pricked him. Moreover, common sense required him to ask how he'd pay for graduate school. Even if he were able to secure a graduate assistantship that waived his tuition, he'd have to work in addition to the assistantship, just to survive the cost of living in California.

"If I do apply," Scott said now, "I'll pay you back for putting me through school."

"You will not. I told you before - "

"That was when I was planning to come back here and teach!"

And his exclamation stopped them both - a moment of honesty brought out by guilt.

"And now you don't plan that," Xavier finished softly.

Rubbing his eyes beneath his glasses, Scott said, "I don't _know_." The tone was pained, and half-choked, and despite the chill of midwinter, Scott felt suddenly hot all under the skin.

Charles leaned forward. "Tell me what you do want, son. Not what you think you ought to do."

Something in the timbre of the question unlocked the dungeon inside Scott, and words spilled out of his mouth. "I always thought I wanted to be an engineer and design planes. Then I thought I wanted to teach math. But now I find I'm more curious about how people learned to do things - why some things developed in one place, but not in others. I think plain engineering would bore me now." Abruptly he grinned. "Pun not intended, but appropriate. I like asking 'why,' y'know? Not just the what and how. Maybe Jean and her theorizing is rubbing off on me, but I read stuff, and I keep thinking, 'Okay, yeah, but _why_?' I never really thought I'd be interested in a bunch of dead people, but I am. I want to find out how they did things, and why." Abruptly, he looked away again. "It's not very practical."

Xavier smiled. "No, it's not. But if all we ever did was the 'practical,' would life be much fun?"

"Well, no - but I'm not talking about taking up a hobby. Can I make a _career_ out something so esoteric? _Should_ I? Is saying, 'Because I like it,' good enough? Or is that just selfish?"

Xavier shook his head. "You've asked a very hard question. Not everyone has the luxury of pursuing their interests. And not everyone has the _ability_ to consider graduate school - and I do not mean simply in terms of their intellect. Graduate school requires both perseverance and an ability to self-start - to choose a research topic and pursue it for reasons of interest, not external pressure. You have both of those - as well as the intellectual capacity." And the professor waved the printout with Scott's exceptional test scores.

"So you think I should do it?" Scott was amazed.

"I think you should consider it."

"But, I don't - "

Xavier held up a hand to stop the flood of questions. "Right now, I want you to consider only two things - is this what you _want_, and do you want it badly enough to invest what will be the next six to eight years of your life in it, assuming you go for a full Ph.D.? If you answer 'yes' to both of those, then we shall consider other questions . . . such as the cost, which I know concerns you."

Too stunned to speak for a moment, Scott leaned back. Finally, he said, "I can already answer those questions you asked. Yes, to both of them."

Xavier nodded. He wasn't surprised; he'd felt this moment coming for months. "Then you must follow where your heart leads, Scott. You must live your own dreams, not what you think are mine because you have a misplaced sense of obligation." And he winked. "Why don't you go get some breakfast? We'll discuss the details later, and prepare your application package before you miss the deadline."

* * *

><p>"And that was it?" EJ asked Scott when both returned to Berkeley for the spring semester.<p>

"Well, there were still details, but that was pretty much it," Scott replied, still astonished himself that his graduate school fancies had been received with calm understanding, even encouragement, although intellectually, he knew that the professor wasn't like his father. He'd still been prepared for the worst. Chris Summers might deny being a hothead, but in some matters, he had a trigger-temper. And - if he were honest with himself - Scott knew that he did as well. Stereotypically, Scott and Chris were too much alike in all the wrong ways.

Scott's application did make the deadline, if barely, and then began the wait to see if he'd be accepted for the next fall, and be accepted with a graduate assistantship. In the final call, that had been the compromise on which he and Xavier had settled. The professor would've been willing to pay the cost of his graduate education as well as his undergraduate, but Scott had refused, pride unable to accept that much generosity. Xavier had realized as much, so they'd agreed that the determining factor would be a graduate assistantship. If Scott received one, he'd go on to graduate school. If he didn't, he'd return to the mansion to teach. Xavier himself had little doubt that Scott would receive one, but being under the pressure gun, Scott wasn't so sure.

That spring, Scott lived somewhere between anticipation, sadness, and an increasing disconnection, but disconnection from whom he couldn't say - his friends in Berkeley, or his family back at the mansion? The summer's end would bring his college career to a conclusion, and graduate school, if he were accepted, would be different, more serious. If he were not accepted, then this would be his final semester at Berkeley, summer being merely a coda. Placed thus between a rosy past and an uncertain future, life took on shades of pastel nostalgia and fey shadows. He spent more effort on his schoolwork, but also played harder, dating heavily if never seriously and performing with an exaggerated showmanship for Soapbox, who now gigged as far away as San Francisco and San Jose. The band, too, was reaching the end of an era. Even if Scott did make it into graduate school, Rick would finish at the end of this spring and leave town. They'd be looking for a new guitar player.

Scott heard less from New York as well, increasing his dissociation. Warren was busy in the city, Frank was now in college himself locally, and despite their reconnection at New Year's, Jean had sunk back into the final months of her clinical rotations and preparation for her second set of medical boards, disappearing from Scott's life once more. She became a ghost from his past, the muse of his youth, traveling her road now while his diverged. What had they really had in common anyway? An X-gene? A brief belief that they could save the world? In retrospect, it all seemed rather silly - a prophecy of a dark future, a secret sub-basement, and a mutant power training room like something out of a science-fiction movie. He read that stuff; he didn't live it. _Raiders of the Lost Ark_ was closer to what he had in mind for his future.

Scott remained in Berkeley for Spring Break that year to work on a paper, instead of going home with EJ as he had for the two previous years. If he and Clarice had finally grown easy again in one another's presence, he wasn't prepared for the Haight Family Pressure Cooker, and EJ didn't press. So he spent his time working in the library, and watching over a friend's newt. His paper faired well enough, the newt did not. It took him a few days to realize it was _dead_, not simply hibernating (or the amphibious equivalent), but a rotting-fish stink finally alerted him to the truth and with a wrinkled nose, he cleaned the tank after wrapping the newt's body in cellophane and storing it in the freezer - then forgot to tell EJ, who found six cans of Coke, three bottles of Michelob, one dead newt, and three boxes of Toni's frozen pizza in the entire fridge, when he returned from LA.

"I am _never_ leaving you alone for a whole week again, Slimboy. You're fucking dangerous on your own, to newts and your digestion both. Don't tell me you ate like this last summer, too."

"Okay, I won't tell you."

EJ rolled his eyes. "That's what I was afraid of. And ain't you ever heard of flushing dead stuff down the damn toilet? That's what I did with my goldfish, man."

"I thought Jerrod might want it back."

"It's freakin _dead_."

"Yeah, well - whatever."

When Saint Patrick's Day rolled around a week after spring break and Soapbox wasn't scheduled to gig, EJ and Scott set out about four-thirty in the afternoon on a bar tour of Telegraph Avenue. As EJ was now twenty-one, it was even legal for a change, and in the course of the evening, Scott discovered just how well his mutated metabolism could process alcohol. He'd been aware for some time that he grew tipsy quicker and crashed sooner, and that a bag of Oreos shot his sugar levels high enough to qualify him for a temporary attention deficit disorder. But he'd had no idea just how ill he could make himself. They plowed through five bars and five pitchers of green beer in six hours that night, but first they had dinner in a nice restaurant with red-and-white checkered tablecloths and antique farming implements on the walls.

"So what _did_ you think of me when you first met me?" EJ asked while wolfing down a decidedly un-Irish double-portion of pasta with marinara sauce. They'd been reminiscing about their first year in a pre-emptive attack of Glory Days.

"I thought you were something out of the hood." Scott's own meal was the more traditional corned beef.

EJ glanced up at him. "It's _in_ the hood, white boy." But it was said with humor, then he added, "I thought you were some spoiled rich Hollywood wannabe."

Scott spit beer out his nose. "You're fucking kidding."

"Nope. It was the shades and the Gap wardrobe. Why'd you assume I was in the hood? Just my skin color?"

"Christ, no. It was the clothes and the hair - or lack of it."

"Well, fuck - I was _moving_, not going to a job interview. What'd you expect me to dress like?"

Scott shrugged. "So we both made assumptions."

"Yeah, okay, true." They ate in silence a while, then EJ said, "I've learned a lot, living with you. I wouldn't trade it."

"Me, either."

"If you get into grad school, you gonna go into the grad dorms?"

Surprised, Scott glanced up. "I hadn't especially planned on it." Then a thought occurred to him. "Why? You want somebody _else_ to move in?" He couldn't help but grin.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Scott leaned back in his booth to lace hands together behind his head. He was still grinning. "Oh, nothing."

"Bullshit."

"I was thinking of someone, you know, with the XX chromosome."

EJ's fork clattered to the stoneware pasta plate. People in booths around them glanced over and he bent across the table to say, more softly, "_Whathefuck? _Like who?"

Scott's grin deepened. "I'll give you three guesses and the first two don't freakin' count."

"You're full of shit." EJ went back to eating.

"How many nights of the week is she over at our place?"

"Fuck you."

"I'm just pointing out a fact, Eeej. I thought maybe she could save time going back and forth if she just moved right in."

"_Fuck you_."

Scott laughed and drank his beer. "Come on, admit it. You have it bad for her."

"Yeah? And if I do?"

"Good for you."

EJ glanced up at him. "I'm serious," Scott said. "You two are good together. In fact" - he leaned across the table in an echo of EJ's previous gesture - "I think you've never gotten serious about anyone else in the three years I've known you because you've been in love with Diane Hernandez the whole damn time and just weren't ready to admit it to yourself."

EJ's mouth dropped open, giving Scott a clear view of half-chewed pasta. Then he swallowed and went back to his meal. After a minute, he said, "I haven't even asked her out, man."

"Well, maybe you ought to, lugwit."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe I will."

Grinning, Scott toasted EJ with his beer.

As things turned out, supper wasn't the last meal they shared that night, though the second was five pitchers later and far less pleasant. EJ hadn't realized that he needed to watch Scott's alcohol intake, and Scott hadn't realized that he needed to watch himself, and the drunker Scott became, the less he could judge how drunk he was. By a little after midnight, EJ had to half-carry him out of their fifth and final bar, though EJ himself wasn't sober. "You're trashed, man. I'm about three sheets to the wind, but fuck - you're _five_. Let's get some food into you, and coffee." And he hauled Scott down to Blondie's, the Berkeley branch of a San Francisco pizza parlor that served pie by the slice in an atmosphere balanced between McDonalds and an Italian highway _trattoria_, with decor in bold primary colors. The food was good, but greasy, and when one figured in burnt, bad coffee and too much alcohol in his bloodstream already, Scott's stomach simply rebelled less than halfway into the meal and he spewed the counter with green-tinted barely digested bits of pizza. "Shit!" EJ yelled, embarrassed and appalled at once as watery vomit dripped off Formica onto the floor. Scott had it all over his front, as well as on the counter, the stool, and even on EJ's jeans. Grabbing Scott, EJ hauled him through the restaurant and into the bathroom, after leaving a generous tip on the counter. Scott was reeling still and emptied the rest of his stomach into a toilet, then knelt shaking on the bathroom tile. Worry began to replace EJ's disgust. "Man, this is serious bad news. You been drinking longer than me, Slim. Don't you know when to quit?"

"Never drank that much," Scott whispered. The room stank of disinfectant and piss, in addition to vomit, all of which only twisted his stomach more, but at least his head had cleared a bit, along with his field of vision. Objects didn't swim in and out of it. And while he'd always hated the sensation of vomiting, at the moment, it was the best thing for him so he stuck a finger down his throat to make himself vomit again, but succeeded only in triggering his gag reflex and coughing. He was sweating and dizzy and unsure if he could get to his feet. "I am dog sick," he whispered.

"No shit, Sherlock. Ever heard of alcohol poisoning?"

"I didn't drink any more, any faster than you did."

EJ thought about that. It was true. "So maybe in the future you go light on the beer, just like on the sugar? Your body obviously don't process food the same way mine does."

Scott just nodded. This, he thought, was the downside of his mutation. And then he started to giggle. Here he was, trying to get into grad school, and he didn't even have sense enough to know when to quit drinking. There was something ironic in that.

* * *

><p>"Come in, come in!" Beyond the wide-open door, Bruce's face was almost luminescent as he waved Jean into his lab. Grinning, she pushed past him to see his new toy, the product of three grants totaling thirty-seven million dollars, including one from the National Science Foundation, and a year's worth of careful construction. It was a gravimagnetic field generator, designed to test a theory of Banner's: that a sufficient combination of gravitational force and magnetic field drag tuned to the bond frequencies of DNA would accelerate the emergence of existing quiescent mutations, the same as excessive cortisol in the system. Among the most formidable hurdles that Banner had faced in getting his grants, though, had been the question, "But what would the long-term practical application of such a research direction be?" - meaning that mutations were to be avoided if at all possible, not helped along. Bias in science tended to show itself in masked forms, yet in the end, the grants had come in and Bruce had built his machine. It amounted to a kitchen-table-sized housing with a half-cylinder on top that was broken up into three sections. The outermost section was metal, and the center was a Plexiglas door over the incubation chamber to permit readings and pictures. This was the actual testing chamber. But the majority of the machine, in terms of size, was given over to the two big engines powerful enough to bombard the chamber with gravitons.<p>

"So what do you think?" Bruce asked her.

"It's . . . gray."

"God, Jean! You're no fun!"

She laughed. "Bruce, it looks like a _box_. A big, gray box with a cylinder on top. When are you going to start running experiments so we can see what it actually does?"

"Next week. We're going to have a little party on Wednesday morning and break a bottle of champagne on it."

"Champagne?" She couldn't help but giggle. "It's not a ship!"

He shrugged. "So are you going to come?"

She sighed. "Oh, I _can't_. I've got to be at the hospital, you - "

"I know, I know." He held up a hand. "Rotations. So tell me - it's actually been a few years - when do I have to show up to play brightly-colored lemming? It's reminiscent of Halloween in kindergarten, you know, lining up in files to march around and show off the fancy costume."

She put a hand over her mouth to conceal her grin. Bruce had never been one for ceremony and often couldn't be bothered to wear anything more dressy than jeans to the lab. But if he didn't take ceremony seriously, he took his students seriously, and, traditionally, each doctoral candidate was accompanied by his or her primary advisor for graduation, which meant that Bruce would be walking with her. She'd received special permission for her father, also a college professor, to walk on her other side in _his_ robes, so they'd make quite a set, John Grey in Emory's royal blue and gold with the white of history, Jean in Columbia's ugly Dutch blue with the Kelly-green trim of medicine, and Bruce in Harvard's distinctive scarlet and that funny velvet hat. Like many Harvard doctors, Bruce had adopted the medieval-style tam instead of a mortarboard. Jean thought it looked ridiculous. In any case, in just three weeks, she'd be finished at last. She still found that difficult to process. She had a residency to do yet, of course, and her second and third medical boards, but she really and truly could see light at the end of the tunnel. Sometimes she thought she'd been in school forever - twenty-four years from her first day of kindergarten. "The instructions say we're supposed to be there at least an hour in advance, so they can line us up to march in. That means by six o'clock."

"Which translates to getting here at four in order to find parking. Good thing I'll be in that day anyway. Ah, the Graduation Zoo. The main campus is already gearing up for the big show on Wednesday. Thank God you didn't want me to do that."

Laughing outright, she said, "I figured getting you to one ceremony was bad enough. I have to go, but you don't." Medical school graduates were administered the Hippocratic oath, so she wasn't permitted to skip, however much she might have liked to.

The wry look had disappeared from his face, and he regarded her solemnly. "It's not every day that I get to hood a new doctor, Jean. I'll be there." Then his kid's smile stole back. "Come on, I want to show you the schedule for preliminary tests." And he led her over to his cluttered desk.

* * *

><p>"I think this is what you been haunting the mailbox for, Slimboy."<p>

An envelope was dropped in Scott's lap where he sat on the couch, trying to read a book. It fell face down so Scott couldn't see the return address, but EJ knew perfectly well what Scott was waiting to find out. This was the letter that would determine the direction his life would take, and he stared at it for the course of five breaths, unable to summon the courage even to touch it. His stomach shook. But EJ stood right there, waiting to see, and so Scott picked it up. He wanted to take it back to his room, to open in private - just in case - and EJ belatedly realized that he was hovering. "I'm going into the kitchen to finish dinner. DeeDee's coming over, then we're going out to see if we can catch _MI-2_ tonight. Lines are probably hell." And he walked away, leaving Scott alone with the couch and the book and the letter and his anxieties.

Picking up the envelope, Scott turned it over. "University of California at Berkeley, Department of Anthropology" read the return. Wiggling a pinky into the edge of the flap, he ripped it open along one side and tried to pretend that his hands weren't shaking. Then he turned the envelope on end and shook out the letter - three sheets, which he supposed was better than one. They only needed one to turn an applicant down.

He read it twice, just to be sure, then erupted off the couch with a bellowed, "_I'm in!_"

EJ came back out into the living room, wooden spoon in hand, to find Scott standing atop the cheap coffee table, waving the letter above his head. "I'm in! I'm in! They gave me a graduate assistantship! I'm in, dammit!"

"Congratulations, man! I'm glad you're sticking around." In fact, EJ had been almost as nervous as Scott for the last few months. While he knew theoretically that all good things did end, he'd been distressed by the prospect of losing his best friend. This past year had renewed the deep tie that had bound them as freshmen, and both had tacitly agreed that it was like a hummingbird - brilliant and lovely and rarely seen, and not to be spoken of too loudly, lest it be frightened off by excessive attention. Now, EJ, no less than Scott, felt as if a weight had been lifted from his back, and thus lightened, he said, "I think a dinner party's in order - but not tonight. Tomorrow. You name it, I'll fix it. Well, within reason."

Slyly, Scott grinned. "What? No fried newt?"

At that, EJ burst into laughter.

* * *

><p><em>Subject: School News<em>  
><em>From: .edu<em>  
><em>Date: 424/2000 4:18pm_  
><em>To: <em>

_Hey, long time, no speak. Sorry I've been so busy. I just thought you'd like to know that I got the graduate assistantship, so it looks like I'm going to grad school after all. Now I just have to decide if I'll focus on the Med or the Maya. -S2_

Jean found the note in her mail in the wee hours of the morning when she had some downtime while on call. She debated phoning him to tell him congratulations, but didn't because even if he was in California, she'd probably still wake him up. She also didn't call because the news depressed her. She was glad for him, but this was, she thought, the beginning of the end of their little mansion family. Scott wasn't coming back. He'd go on to get his doctorate, then be out looking for a tenure-track position and would wind up wherever he could get a job. She was getting ready to graduate herself, and while she planned to do a year of residency at Columbia, she had no idea where she'd go after that. Warren was rarely at the mansion now, his father using him heavily in business affairs, and he even had his own office suite on West Street. And Hank was considering an offer from Brand Corporation Laboratories. Only Frank and Ororo still lived at the mansion in Westchester, and Bobby occasionally.

Leaning back in the chair at the little desk in the interns' room, Jean bit the edge of her index finger lightly. Fluorescent light glared down on the desk, but the fitting above faced backwards so it didn't shine out into the room itself and her fellow interns could get some rest. Rising, she walked over to the window and pushed back the heavy vinyl curtain, looking out over the city skyline. In the distance, she spotted the World Trade Center and leaned her shoulder against the cool glass, wondering fancifully if she could guess which windows were Warren's. As for Scott, he slept on the other side of the country, and she wondered, just as idly, if San Francisco seemed as picturesque in person as it did in pictures. She'd been to Europe seven times but never west of the Mississippi. California was another world to an East Coast girl.

She'd always just assumed that Scott would return to Westchester, and not because it was what he'd planned to do when he'd left. He'd simply been a mansion fixture, even if he hadn't lived there for the last three years - and wasn't it funny how the mind got itself stuck like that in a looping video of the past? People changed. He had a different set of interests these days, and she wasn't sure she knew him anymore. Between one thing and another, they hadn't spoken much either before or after New Year's, and a few hours on one evening couldn't make up for months and months of silence. She honestly couldn't pinpoint the last time she'd gotten email from him before this present letter. Early March? It was now the dregs of April. How different that was from his first semester at Berkeley when they'd written once a day and talked once a week.

She walked back to her laptop and hit the "Reply" button, sending him well wishes electronically instead of verbally. It was what she would have done with a colleague, or a virtual stranger. And that's what he was now, wasn't it? A virtual stranger. Melancholy tinged her thoughts.

* * *

><p>"The nightmares are back, aren't they?" Ororo asked, dropping down to sit beside Frank on a bench in the back garden. He was looking off at the maze, but she was not quite sure he saw it. Now, he simply nodded. "Have you told the professor?" Ro asked.<p>

Frank shook his head.

"Are you going to?

"I don't know."

"What are they this time? The visions?"

Frank didn't answer immediately, or directly. He'd come up against the quandary of his own ethics. Did the good of the many outweigh the good of the few, or the one? _You've seen too much Star Trek_, he scolded himself, amused. "Scott isn't coming back."

She studied him. "He was accepted to grad school, yes. What does that have to do with it?"

"He's not coming back. He'll go on to his own life, take a professorship, marry -" And not marry the right person. _Not unless . . . _But did he tell Ororo everything he knew and involve her in his choices? He'd never held so much power in his hands as he did this afternoon. He could save one man's life, two men's self-image, one woman's sanity, and one man's dream. Or he could save his people.

"We must all make choices, Francesco," Ororo said, referring to Scott.

"I know," he replied, meaning himself. He stared down at the cell phone in his hand, then put it away and begged forgiveness of a shade yet to be. The sky above was obscenely blue.

* * *

><p>Jean hadn't seen Ted Roberts since the evening of her dissertation defense - the evening they'd broken up. She'd kept herself apprized of what he'd been up to, that he'd successfully defended his own dissertation earlier that spring, and that he was dating another girl. No doubt, he'd heard that she'd finished her clinicals and had graduated the month before in May. But it had been over a year since they'd met face to face, and neither had been prepared for it coming by accident. She'd been walking into Bruce's lab and he'd been heading out on some errand. They literally bumped into one another, exchanged awkward greetings, then stood looking at their feet. "How've you been?" he asked. "Fine," she said. "I was headed down to the computer lab," he said. "Okay," she replied, and moved aside. Then he was gone and she breathed out, slipping into the lab herself. She'd come because Bruce had told her that he had some results she might find interesting, and now she wondered if Bruce had been trying to get rid of Ted first, or if he'd meant for them to run into each other and quit practicing the avoidance they'd been engaged in since the previous spring.<p>

Whatever the case, Banner looked up now. "Jean! I'm glad you could make it." Hank was also there, she noticed.

"What's got you so excited?" Jean asked.

"This." And Banner handed her a set of printouts. "These" - he pointed to a set of figures - "are cortisol readings of mutants immediately after their mutation manifested. And _these_" - he pointed to another set - "are readings of mutant cells tested in the GFG." The gravimagnetic field generator.

They weren't identical, but they were close. Jean carried both printouts over to a lab table so she could examine them more closely. "I looks like you were right," she said - needlessly. Hank had come over to pull out a stool on the table's opposite side and she turned the printouts sideways so he could see, too. She started to feel a bubble of excitement rise up under her breastbone. "Bruce, you know what this means?"

"Why do you think you're here, m'dear?" And Banner crossed to lean elbows on the edge of the tabletop and look at the printouts upside down. Jean was quite certain he already knew them by heart. He wouldn't have called her - or Hank - in here unless he'd made triple sure.

"How many trials did you run?" she asked anyway, needlessly.

"Six."

That was a lot even for Bruce, but she was dying of curiosity. Jean looked up. "Will you show me? Will you run one more?"

He grinned. "Why do you think I brought you and Hank here? Let's wait just a minute for Ted to get back. I've got the samples all prepped."

Laughing, Jean leapt up to grab Banner around the neck, kissing him soundly on the cheek. "Thank you, thank you!"

"Hey!" he said. "You'll make my wife jealous."

So they sat for half an hour, shooting the bull and waiting for Ted. Banner wanted to know what Jean had been doing since graduation. "Relaxing," she told him. "I think, after all these years, I've earned a summer off." Though that was only partly the truth. She'd been spending her summer at a different sort of training. For the first time in far too long, she's begun to exercise her TK again. It was rustier than she'd have wished but, like riding a bike, it was coming back at a faster rate than she'd expected. She could lift her own weight now, and could perform fine tasks, including threading shoelaces.

In any case, Ted was back and Bruce rose up to join him by the GFG, talking quietly over the printouts Ted had fetched.. Despite her curiosity, Jean chose to remain at the table rather than rub elbows too closely with Ted Roberts. He'd glanced at her as he'd entered, but then had kept his attention on the machine, the printouts, and Bruce.

Jean's presence made Ted nervous. He'd known that Bruce had intended to invite Hank, but he hadn't realized that Jean would be here, too, although common sense might have told him as much. Banner didn't interfere too much in his students' lives, but he wasn't above a bit of manipulation. Just now, he was frowning at the new printout with the thoughtful expression he sometimes got. "Go ahead and start her up," Bruce told him absently, and walked back towards Jean.

Ted snapped the cylinder clamps into place as Banner reached the table and set the new printouts down on it. Then he, Hank and Jean bent over them in a huddle. Ted's eyes kept drifting in that direction as his fingers found the power switch for the engines. Jean Grey was still beautiful. It was so damn unfair.

That was the last thought he ever had as he switched on the double engines.

Henry McCoy happened to glance up just as the gravimagnetic field generator incubation cylinder blew open and the brilliant white and almost fluid gravimagnetic field burst outward, swallowing Ted Roberts instantly. But it wasn't the field that killed Roberts. It was flying shrapnel from the overstressed and shattering cylinder.

Hank had less than a second to think, but the full advantage of X-enhanced reflexes, mutant strength, and the presence of mind to explode across the lab table, grab Jean and Bruce in one arm each, and fall beneath the other lab table behind Jean. Stools struck them haphazardly and he heard Jean cry out in pain, but his quick thinking saved their lives, keeping them from being struck by flying parts as, without its safeties in place, the GFG disintegrated under the stress of its monstrous engines. Hank heard a metal scream and then a blast. And then nothing.

* * *

><p>If not for Frank, Charles Xavier would have heard about the accident at the Columbia Genetics Lab on the evening news, along with everyone else. Neither Jean Grey nor Hank McCoy were his children or immediate family. But only minutes after it had occurred, Frank showed up in the kitchen where Xavier was making tea. "There has been an accident," he said, face grim.<p>

"Has been?" the professor asked. "Not will be?"

"Has been," Frank reiterated. "You will find Hank, and Jean, at Columbia Medical emergency room. They are alive. It would be . . . best . . . if we retrieve Hank as soon as it is possible."

Xavier studied Francesco for a long moment and the boy met his eyes calmly. In the space of those few heartbeats, the professor understood several things: first, that Frank had known beforehand and had chosen not to reveal what would occur, second that it was a choice Frank would suffer under for the rest of his life, and third - for the first time in literally years - Charles Xavier knew what it was like to surrender himself to the wisdom of another.

There was a certain godlike aspect to telepathy as strong as his, when he so easily knew the thoughts of everyone around him. Even if he didn't manipulate them directly, he couldn't help but respond to people with that knowledge. Yet he didn't know the future, and he understood at last the fear that could be generated by a mutant whose powers allowed him to make decisions for Xavier that might or might not reflect Xavier's own. Trust. The professor had to trust a twenty-year-old boy with the prescience of Apollo. "What did you see, Frank?"

The younger man didn't answer directly. Instead, he said, "It was this, or the death of thousands. This is the pivotal event; it all turns on this. If I had called them, warned them, made sure it didn't happen, everything that should come after would unravel - was about to unravel." He turned then and walked out, calling after him, "I shall phone Warren, and ask Ororo to drive us there."

It took them a good hour. Emergency vehicles still clogged the street outside the Hammer Building, and one of the windows on sixth floor was stained black with the glass shattered out of it. But they didn't try to stop there. Ororo pulled into the hospital visitor parking lot down the street, and Frank and Ororo wheeled Xavier into the emergency room. Every hospital smelled alike, the professor thought. Warren was already there waiting for them. "They won't tell me anything!" he complained, the anxiety spiking out of him. "I'm not family! They won't even take my money!"

_Shhh,_ Xavier sent. Though he wasn't surprised that Warren, in desperation, might have tried to grease some palms, it didn't pay to announce it. _All of you, come with me into the waiting rooms. _And they followed.

Once out of the main walkway and ensconced in a corner of the cramped waiting room with two chairs for his three students, Charles closed his eyes and folded his hands in front of him. Others would no doubt think him praying. There was always a moment's disorientation as he slipped through minds like an eel through coral, looking for the particular signatures he knew. Jean's he found first, surprisingly strong and steady though she was unconscious still. Hank's was . . . oddly blurred, perhaps by pain killers. Xavier could sense the massive lacerations along his back and side, but he was too high-happy to care about it.

Now came the harder part, searching through a plethora of minds he didn't know - the medical personnel working over his students - to learn Hank and Jean's condition. As he was more concerned with Hank, he searched for his attending first, but it took him a moment to realize that he'd found the woman and was seeing the situation through her eyes . . . and then he got a shock.

Hank was . . . not Hank.

"Stay here," the professor told the three in the waiting room. He was about to do something of a questionable ethical nature, and he didn't want them involved, at least not until he knew more. He understood now Frank's warning that they needed to fetch Hank as quickly as possible.

When younger, Charles Xavier had been almost casual in his manipulation of minds. Now, older and more aware of human grays, he understood why angels might fear to tread, but he wouldn't stand by and watch such a gentle man as Henry McCoy bleed to death in a hospital emergency room just because he now looked like something from Charles Lamb's _Beauty and the Beast_. Taking the swinging doors backward, he wheeled himself into the ER proper and moved like a ghost among the medical staff. No one spoke to him. He didn't try to make them not see him; he simply made them not care. Fortunately, the ER had no security cameras, so he had only to worry about a mental record of his presence.

Jean had been transferred into one of the treatment rooms because her condition wasn't critical, but Hank still occupied Trauma Room A. Nurses hung about gaping, and even a security man. One resident, a woman, worked over Hank with the help of two assistants while the second, another woman, stood well back from the table, staring. The doctors were yelling at one another, the working one in rage, the watching one in fear. How sadly ironic that medical personnel who could face unflinching the worst that human carelessness and bad luck could throw at them now hung back instead of doing their job - saving human lives. But that was precisely the problem, wasn't it?

Henry could no longer be mistaken for a normal human.

Slipping into the minds of those present, Xavier calmed fears and soothed anger and brought the reluctant half of the trauma team back to the bed, even while he wondered how much of the man they'd known as Henry McCoy was left inside the oversized form occupying the table. Charles remembered the fuzzed, confused sensation of Hank's mind. But assuming a man did still remain inside the beast, it might be best if Hank's identity were not known. When Xavier had entered the emergency room proper, he'd seen both Jean and Hank's names up on the board behind the nurse's station, information no doubt acquired from wallets, lab coats, or name tags. That wouldn't do, and seeing that matters in the trauma room were now in hand, Xavier wheeled his chair back to the nurses station. He hated tampering with others' minds or falsifying records, but when it came to protecting his 'children,' he'd do what was necessary as the lesser of two evils.

It was easy enough to influence one nurse to erase Hank's name and replace it with a generic "John Doe 7," then fetch the chart from the spinning rack on the desk, rip out the information page, drop it in the trash, and replace it with another. The other nurses remained oblivious, and Xavier wheeled past to fetch the balled up paper from the little trash bin and tuck it away in his chair. Leave no evidence. It wouldn't matter if there were a record of Jean's admission since she wasn't obviously a mutant.

But much as he disliked it, he needed to wake her to see if she could tell him what had occurred, and he rolled down the hall to the examination room in which they'd placed her until they could treat her. An IV had been started, but little else. The room was strangely quiet after the bustle out in the hall. She was still in the dusty, torn clothes in which they'd apparently found her, and her visible skin was covered with minor scratches, abrasions, and bruising, but nothing more serious. He had no idea what damage might lie internally, but he could sense from her unconscious mind no severe pain. For the moment, no one else was in the room and Xavier gratefully relaxed the loose telepathic hold he'd had over minds in the ER. He'd learned long ago that if one looked like one knew what one was about, people rarely stopped to ask questions, so he'd needed only light touches to accomplish his goals. But light touches or not, he'd make them to multiple minds and that was a strain. Now, in Jean's room, and dressed in a business suit, anyone coming in was likely to assume he was medical personnel.

He smoothed her hair back from her forehead and let his mind slip into hers. She was only lightly out and would probably have woken soon. _Jean... _

Her eyes snapped open and she started to lunge upward, but he kept his palm on her forehead and she winced, moaned and relaxed. "You're in the hospital, Jean," he said. "Can you tell me what happened?"

"Oh, God," she whispered and he could feel the shock stiffen her muscles and shudder through her. "Oh, God, oh, God. It blew up. Bruce's new GFG. It blew up. And Ted - " She choked and stopped. "He was right there," she whispered. "Oh, God."

"Shhh." Xavier stroked her hair and kept a very light touch on her mind, not enough to interfere but enough to keep her calm, just in case she did have internal injuries. "Hank is here in the hospital. He's going to be okay." Well, he was going to live. More than that, Xavier couldn't say, and no doubt Ted Roberts wasn't in the ER because he was in a morgue. "Who else was in the lab besides you, Hank, and Ted?"

"Bruce," she whispered back. "Bruce was there, too. The last thing I remember hearing was this . . . this awful _whine_. It made the most terrible noise, like a hundred nails down a chalkboard. And a white light. The next thing I knew, though, Hank had leapt over the table and we were all falling backwards. I think I hit my head on the edge of the other lab table." She'd been staring up at the ceiling, and now her dark eyes slid sideways. They were full of tears. "Will Hank really be okay? He saved our lives. And what about Bruce?"

"Hank doesn't appear to be fatally injured, though he took more damage than you." Xavier stroked her hair again. "And I'm sorry, Jean, but I haven't seen Bruce. It may be that he was taken to another hospital." Though the likelihood of that, with the Hammer Center right down the block from Columbia Presbyterian, was slim. It grieved Xavier. Bruce Banner was, or had been, a good man, a good researcher, and might have been a friend, if they'd had more time to interact. As it was, their different callings had kept them too busy to do more than drop email on occasion and chat at conferences, yet he knew it would be a terrible blow to Jean to lose her mentor. All that, however, had to wait. "Jean, I must know what happened. As best you remember."

"I'm not sure. Bruce had some new, really interesting data that he wanted to share with Hank and me, but especially me. The readings of the cells he'd tested in the GFG all approached or matched the cortisol readings of mutants immediately after manifestation."

"So his hypothesis was correct."

"It looked that way. But I don't know why the machine would _explode_. This wasn't the first time they'd run it. It wasn't even the twentieth. Bruce has had it for two months. If there'd been a problem with it, it would have showed by now." She sighed. "There really isn't anything else to tell. We were looking at printouts while Ted started the machine. Then it exploded. That's all I know. How much damage did it do?"

"Unfortunately, I have no idea." Though given what he'd seen of the Hammer building even at a distance, the damage had been enough. As they would learn later, only Banner's lab had been utterly destroyed, but the exploding machine had torn a large hole in the wall nearest to it and there had been several fires, not to mention smoke damage to the entire floor. At least the lab next door to Bruce's had been empty. No one besides the four in the lab had been hurt. What concerned Xavier most at the moment, though, was the apparent effect of the accident on Hank. Had the gravimagnetic field escaped its protective housing somehow and set off a secondary mutation? Or had Hank's original mutation never been complete in the first place?

A doctor had arrived finally to check on Jean, so Xavier excused himself to see what had become of Hank, who now lay unconscious on a gurney in the hallway right outside Trauma A. No one was quite sure what to do with him next. The word 'mutant' came up several times, but his mutation was now so extreme that the staff doubted that could explain it. Police had even been called in while Xavier had talked with Jean; they seemed to view him as a prime suspect in the cause of the lab accident. Apparently 'just because.'

That was not good, and whatever the consequences, the professor decided abruptly that Henry McCoy couldn't be left to the tender mercies of the hospital, _or_ the police. _Jean? _he sent. _What's your condition? _

_I think I'll live, sir. Apparently nothing more serious than some bad bruises and scrapes. _

_Make no mention of Henry. He was not in that lab, do you understand? _

_Yes, sir. _But it was quizzical.

And to his waiting students outside the ER doors, he send, _I need the three of you. Ororo, go out to the parking lot and drive my car around to the ER entrance; ensure that the rear doors are unlocked and spread a blanket on the backseat, if you can find one in the trunk. Frank and Warren, I shall need you inside the emergency room proper. As Henry's own father would say, we are about to pull a 'Hank Snow.'_

_Sir? _Warren sent back.

_'Moving on,' Mr. Worthington. Hank Snow sang a song called 'Moving on.'_

And on the very heel of that, both boys were inside the doors, staring around at arguing people . . . and then at Hank on the gurney. Warren gaped, but Frank was unsurprised, and Xavier noted that. He wondered, idly, just how much the boy knew.

_You see our dilemma,_ he sent. _I need you to wheel Hank out to the ER entrance, then get him loaded into the car. _

_That's_ Hank_? _Warren asked.

_Indeed it is. Warren, after he's safely in the car, you'll remain here to assist Jean. She will probably be released after the paperwork is complete, which could take half a day, given how hospitals operate. Her parents may arrive in the meantime, if the hospital has contacted them. _

_Oh, gee, thanks,_ Warren sent back. _Sic Mrs. Grey on me, why don't you? He was still staring around at the people. They don't see us, do they? _And then, _God, they're talking about arresting him! _

_Yes. We cannot permit him to be taken into custody, particularly for a crime he didn't commit, if it was a crime at all and not mere human error. Now, quickly. One of you on either end of the gurney - just wheel him out the door. And no, no one will see us. Or rather, their minds won't register what they do see. _

And Xavier became aware then of Jean standing in the doorway behind him, her doctor calling her back inside. Xavier turned to look at her. Her face was white. Utterly white. _Go back and lay down, Jean. You could still be suffering from shock, at the very least. _

"What happened to him?" she whispered. Then, "My God - it changed him."

_Apparently so. We shall handle it. _He hoped. _Remember what I told you to say, if anyone should ask you questions. You know nothing about a blue, hirsute figure. Now, go back in and lay down, _and he tweaked her mind just so. She obeyed.

Frank and Warren were already moving Hank's gurney. Xavier followed. He could hardly erase memories of Hank's presence in ER. Or rather, he could, but it would cause more trouble than it was worth. Better to effect something simpler - the patient had been moved to a different room, then had woken and apparently escaped. It wasn't perfect, but would do. The main thing was to prevent anyone from making a connection between the extraordinary blue-furred mutant admitted with wounds to the torso, and a research colleague of Bruce Banner by the name of Henry McCoy. On the way out by the nurses station, Xavier paused to remove the wallet that the ER team had taken from Hank's back pocket and deposited in a personal effects bag. Then he followed his students out.

It was a strange 'escape,' Warren thought, when they could simply roll Hank out through an oblivious crowd, but saying as much to Frank got no reply. The younger man been acting rather oddly ever since the professor had arrived, or even odder than he usually did, and Warren had long ago given up on actually understanding Francesco Placido. He shook his head.

By the time they got outside, Ororo was waiting with the car, and her reaction to Hank was much like Warren's had been - shock and disbelief. But she helped them haul the unconscious bulk off the gurney into the Rolls' rear seat. It took all three of them, and much grunting. "He's added at least a hundred pounds!" Warren huffed.

"I hope that we are not doing him worse damage," Ororo replied, panting.

"It is better than the alternative. They would have taken him into custody," Frank reminded them. "And do you think they would have believed his story? It is best this way."

Neither of the other two was inclined to argue with a precog, and the professor had joined them in any case. They helped him into the Rolls, then Ororo and Frank got in, and Warren was left to see Jean home, and deal with the Greys if they arrived. When he considered it, he decided that facing an angry Elaine Grey would be preferable to facing Hank when he first looked in a mirror.

Whatever Hank had been given in the ER, it kept him unconscious for the entire return to the mansion, which was fortunate, Xavier thought, as having him wake in a moving vehicle, in such a changed condition and with God only knew what mental alterations in addition to the physical, could result in all manner of crises. Yet when they had returned, they found themselves seriously compromised without Warren's mutant strength to help them unload Hank. If, wings aside, Warren might not have appeared significantly different, his mutation included alterations to his sight, his bone structure, and his musculature. In short, he was a lot stronger than he looked.

And now, without him, Frank and Ororo couldn't budge the suddenly increased bulk of Hank McCoy. Xavier had to call in additional assistance from two of his staff. Not Bobby. Not yet. The two men were used to being around mutants, of course, but even their expressions showed alarm at Hank's altered form.

They deposited Henry upstairs in his bed, though Xavier had considered putting him downstairs in the sub-basement lab . . . just in case. But Henry didn't need to wake to a shiny metal room and an antiseptic atmosphere. Better to be surrounded by the familiar, though one could hardly say that waking in the lab would be the _unfamiliar_ to him.

Frank and Ororo stood in the bedroom door beside the professor's chair. "So now what?" Ororo asked.

"Now, we wait," Xavier said.

* * *

><p>The moment of truth came more rapidly for Jean than she might have expected, as the doctor didn't need much time confirming that she had sustained nothing more serious than some bad scratches and a mild concussion, and noted as much in her chart so they could clear her out of an overfull ER. Her clothes - a nice blouse and khakis - were a mess, but there was no help for that. She hadn't come prepared with a spare change of clothing, and Warren being Warren, he could hardly give up his shirt and jacket in public. A nurse offered Jean a spare blue scrub top to replace her shredded blouse, and some mild pain killers, and then she was on her way to the front desk, Warren hovering like an anxious parent. "You sure you're okay?" "Yes, I'm sure." "They let you go awfully quickly." "Warren! I'm fine!"<p>

She had other things to worry about in any case, such as what had happened to Hank. The more she thought about that, the more concerned she became, but when she asked more information from the staff (people who, come the fall, she'd be working alongside daily) no one could remember much that was specific. That was the professor's handiwork, she knew. And no one could tell her anything about Ted or Bruce, either. It was while she'd paused to query a nurse that a police officer stepped up beside her. He was a tall man, thin, with medium brown skin and an all-business attitude. "You're Jean Grey? You were at the site of the accident? Can I ask you a few questions?"

"Officer, I think she needs - "

"Shh," Jean told Warren, raising a hand. Any apparent lack of cooperation would be that much more suspicious. "I'd be happy to help," she said. "And maybe you can help me, too. I'm trying to find out what happened to the two other people in the lab."

"There were only two?"

"Yes. Myself, Bruce Banner - whose lab it was - and Ted Roberts. I was brought here, but I haven't seen either of them."

He gave her a quizzical glance. "What, exactly, happened, Ms. Grey?"

"Dr. Grey," Warren corrected.

Jean pinched his arm as irritation washed over the officer's face. "I'm sorry, Dr. Grey," the officer amended.

"It's okay. As for what happened, I'm not sure myself. Bruce - Dr. Banner - had invited me in to share some particularly exciting test results and demonstrate them in the GFG - the gravimagnetic field generator. Dr. Banner and I were sitting at a lab table, looking over the results when Ted - Mr. Roberts - started the GFG engines. There was a terrible whine, and then the explosion. That's pretty much it, for what I remember. I must have hit my head on a lab table. I have the concussion to prove it." She rubbed the side of her head, both for effect and because it did genuinely hurt.

He'd been taking notes while she spoke, and now glanced up. "Did anyone else come into the lab while you were there, and then leave?"

And Jean paused, frowning. She wasn't sure what to say. Certainly other people in the genetics department had seen Hank around that day. It probably wouldn't do to lie entirely, never mind that if Bruce had been taken to another hospital and anyone took _his_ statement, he'd no doubt name Hank as there in the lab, and incriminate her in the process. Easier if she could claim confusion. "Well, when I first arrived, Mr. Roberts was on his way down to the computer core to pick up a new printout. Hank - Dr. McCoy - had been there earlier, but he left with Ted. When Ted came back, he started up the machine." She'd felt Warren stiffen beside her at the mention of Hank, but she didn't react herself.

The officer was frowning. "This Dr. McCoy - how long was he in the lab, and would he have been in the lab alone at any time?"

And realization struck Jean - they were looking for a saboteur. "I'm sorry," she replied, voice cold, "I have no idea how long Dr. McCoy was in the lab, nor if he'd have been alone with the machine, but as he helped to _build_ it in the first place, if he'd wanted to do anything to it, he'd have had multiple opportunities before now. He and Dr. Banner are very close."

The officer winced. "I'm sorry, ma'am, but we have to ask these questions."

Jean nodded. "Then understand this - Hank McCoy would stand to lose as much, career wise, as Bruce Banner if something went wrong with that machine. Accidents happen, you know. Even if it wasn't an accident, there are more likely suspects than Dr. McCoy. Now, it's my turn to ask a question. What _happened_ to Mr. Roberts and Dr. Banner?"

The officer sighed and shook his head. "I'm not really supposed to tell you - "

"- but you will, because they're my friends," Jean finished.

He eyed her, but then shrugged. "Well, as for Ted Roberts - I guess he was the guy we found right next to the machine. I'm sorry. He didn't make it."

Jean had suspected as much, but her hand still went out to grip Warren's arm, and he slipped an arm around her waist. "And Bruce?"

"I don't know ma'am. The only ones found were you, the body and . . . well, this sounds crazy - but some big blue furry guy. They brought him in here, but he woke up and escaped. That's what they're telling us, anyway. But God, you'd think _somebody_ would notice him walking out!"

"You'd think," Jean echoed, and leaned more heavily into Warren, her head on his shoulder. He stroked her hair. "I'm sorry. I don't know anything about a blue furry man in the lab. Could . . . could Dr. Banner have woken up and walked away?"

"Possible, I guess. Not likely. You were, well, buried under rubble. If he was with you, he'd have been there, too. This blue guy was lying on top of you."

"So he did save my life," Jean said, then swallowed, hoping the officer hadn't caught her peculiar phrasing.

But all he said was a dubious, "I guess. Or maybe he caused it."

Jean shook her head. "I told you, Bruce and I were looking at the printout and Ted started the machine, which exploded. No blue guy."

The officer added a few more comments in his notebook, then he said, "Thank you. I imagine someone else will want to talk to you about it again. Where can we reach you?"

Jean gave him the phone number of her city apartment, and then grabbed Warren to pull him out into the busy ER waiting room area, where a dozen other conversations concealed theirs. "I want to go back to the lab."

"Forget it, Jean. Even if you were in any shape to go, I'm sure the whole floor was evacuated. They're not going to let you up there."

"Then I'll have to - " Abruptly, she stopped. She had an idea. Surely it couldn't be so easy, surely not . . . but it was worth a try. "Warren, I don't need to get onto the floor; I just need to get into the _computer lab_. I hope. And as long as that wasn't damaged in the blast, they're not going to shut it down or they'd have nine hundred furious grad students."

He eyed her curiously, but shrugged. "Okay, but I don't see the point."

She ignored that and set about checking herself out before her parents arrived with their particular brand of paranoia and sucked her into it for the next week. Once out of the hospital, they walked up the street to the Hammer Building and on the way, she dialed her father's cell. Warren caught only her half of the conversation. "Dad, this is Jean. I just wanted to call and tell you I'm fine. There's no need to come down here." "No, Dad, I'm fine." "Yes, really." "Yes, there was an explosion. It was an accident. I'm fine." "Dad, I'm _fine_. You and mom turn around and go on home." "Dad, I have to go. Someone wants to ask me some questions. I won't be home until late I'm sure. I'll call you tomorrow. Bye." And she snapped the phone shut.

"Liar, liar, pants on fire."

"Fuck you, War."

"Such language."

She shot him a bird and he laughed. They'd nearly reached the building. The emergency vehicles were all gone by this point. It was verging on the dregs of afternoon, but the place was swarming with the curious, talking about the explosion. People stared at her, as she was dressed - or partly dressed - in torn clothing and had scratches all over her face, but no one stopped her. She didn't even see anyone whom she immediately recognized. She and Warren took the elevator up to a floor with a computer lab full of Sun stations. There, at least, she ran into people she knew and had to field questions. They were relieved to see her, but plenty of people had also seen the EMTs wheeling out a shrouded body, and knew that someone had died, but not who. Jean claimed ignorance - the news would be out soon enough - and stuck to her story that only Bruce, Ted and herself had been in the lab. "But I thought I saw Hank hanging around up there today, too?" Evelyn said.

"He was, but he left," Jean replied. No one questioned that. Why would they?

Observers had, however, seen the blue furry version of Hank. "What _was_ that?" and "Where did it come from?" were the main questions. Jean claimed ignorance about that, too, and after a good twenty minutes, people left her alone. She sat down at an open machine, a little away from the chattering others, and pulled herself up to the keyboard. Warren joined her.

"What are you after?"

"Test results," Jean replied, and turned her attention to the machine. She'd graduated, but only a month ago and she should still have access to the system until the following September. _Please, please,_ she whispered to herself as she typed in her user name and password. And . . .

It worked. She breathed out and closed her eyes. Thank God for small miracles. As long as she was still in the system, she was sure that she was still a part of Banner's research group and had access to those protected files. The trick now was finding the ones she wanted.

In the end, she had to print out the past-five-days'-worth of test and research statistical results, but found the ones she wanted, the same ones that Bruce had shown her earlier in the lab. Waving these under a still-confused Warren's nose, she said, "Now, maybe I can get some answers."

"For what?"

Jean glanced around quickly, but they were alone. "For Hank, War."

Warren opened his mouth to inquire further, but at that moment, they heard first a wild bellow, and then a shrill scream. It sounded as if it was one floor down, and everyone in the lab - including Jean and Warren - raced out and down the stairs, to see what had happened.

They found a terrorized secretary sitting on the floor of her office. She'd obviously been getting ready to go home, as she had her purse clenched in one hand and a plastic bag with an empty Tupperware lunch bowl gripped in the other. She was glassy-eyed and panting, and had slid right onto the carpet . . . which was dark with liquid. She'd wet herself in her fright. Jean and Warren pushed to the edge of the small crowd. "Oh, my God, oh, my God," the secretary kept repeating.

"What happened?" someone asked.

"In the closet. It was in the closet. I went to shut the supply closet and it was in there!"

"What?"

"A big green . . . _thing_! A beast! Like a man, but bigger. And all green! It ran away down the hall. Oh, my God, my God. It yelled at me! I thought it was going to kill me!"

Jean and Warren exchanged a glance. Hank was accounted for. Ted was, unfortunately, accounted for. "Bruce?" Jean asked, and stared down at the sheaf of printouts in her hand. A big green thing?

She had to get back to the mansion with these results.

* * *

><p><strong>Notes:<strong> Obviously, I've played around with comic history making Bruce a geneticist, not a physicist, and altering both Bruce and Hank simultaneously by an energy wave intentionally reminiscent of Magneto's machine in the film. Condense, condense, condense. Many thanks to Tarch for the genetic assistance and ideas.


	14. Like Agamemnon

Henry McCoy knew that something was seriously wrong as soon as he awoke in his own bed and saw Frank half-dozing in the chair at his desk. It wasn't the presence of Frank that alarmed him, but the decidedly _different_feel of his own body that extended beyond any cotton-fuzzy effect of pain meds. He felt larger, stuffed like a teddy bear, and a spinning-dizzy chill flashed through his limbs as he stared at the ceiling a moment, watching the ripple of evening shadows from the dancing limbs of the black hickory beyond his bedroom window. Finally, he said, "Fff- Fffanses . . . sssses . . . co?" He could make neither an "r" nor a "ch" sound.

Jerking awake, Frank uncrossed his legs and arms, then smiled. But it was sad. Frank's smiles were often sad. "Welcome back." Rising, he came over to perch on the edge of Hank's bed. "Are you in pain?"

"No. But, I fffeeel odd. Cannntalk." In point of fact, his tongue felt too large for his mouth, or his teeth were . . . different. That was it - his teeth were different. Was he missing some? But no, running his tongue over them, he met a full wall of slick enamel, but very sharp. _My God,_ he thought, _I have_ incisors.

Well, everyone had incisors. But not like these.

What on earth had happened? He started to struggle up, but Frank's hand on his shoulder pushed him back. "Lie still. You are wounded. The doctors sewed you back together from the pieces." Abruptly he grinned. "Well, not so quite. I am Italian; I am allowed to exaggerate. But you must not begin new bleeding, no?"

"Wwwhat happ- happen'd?"

"An accident. You remember the explosions, yes?" Hank nodded and Frank sighed. Here came the difficult part. _Your own fault_, he thought. He'd had the power to stop it, and hadn't. But everyone had to make choices.

Before he could go on, however, Henry asked, "Shhheen? Buce?"

"Jean is fine. Bruce . . . we do not know." Well, he knew, but he would keep that to himself yet.

"What ten? Tell me. And how long out?"

Already Henry was adjusting to the changes in his mouth. It would take time, but he'd relearn how to talk.

"We do not know what happened, not past the obvious. You haven't been unconscious so long, not two hours since we came back." There was no putting it off, so he reached down to raise one of Hank's hands into his friend's field of vision. "There are changes, Henri."

And the expressions that chased across Hank's face pierced Francesco. Confusion, horror, pain, fear - disgust. He started to rise again but Frank pushed him down once more, and weak still, he didn't fight. But his eyes were terrified. "Mihah, mihoh, mi . . ."

"Mirror," Frank said for him. "Lie still. I will find one."

In fact, he'd brought one along from the room that he shared with Ororo, an antique tooled, brass-backed hand mirror, small enough to avoid a whole-body effect. It was sometimes better, he reflected, if shocks came in digestible bites. He handed the mirror to Hank, who stared into it a long while, then dropped it reflective side down on the bed's blanket and turned his face away.

"You are still Henri McCoy," Frank told him. "This" - he indicated Henry's new form - "changes nothing of the you that matters."

"Why?" Hank asked. "Why did it happen?"

"It was the machine, I am thinking."

And Hank pondered that because knowledge was Henry McCoy's god, the solace he'd always sought for the differences that had set him apart from the very beginning. He could recall seeing the gravimagnetic field escape the GFG containment cylinder and spread outward, enveloping Ted Roberts and moving beyond even as the machine itself had cracked apart under pressure. He'd leapt over the table to knock Jean and Bruce to the floor, but that had been to save them from the shrapnel of a disintegrating machine, not from the field.

"Sheen - ?" Then in frustration, he shook his head and mimed writing. Frank nodded and fetched a yellow pad and pen from the desk while Hank studied his hands, now covered with very short, dense, pale-lapis-blue fur everywhere except the palms, the skin of which had thickened and turned a darker royal shade. But otherwise, their shape hadn't changed; they were as outsized as they'd always been.

_You were born a freak, Henry McCoy,_ he thought bitterly as he took the paper from Frank to scribble, _Has Jean changed? _

Frank shook his head, and Hank breathed out in relief, then wrote, _My mutation must never have completed itself. That's what the GFG was supposed to do: trigger recessive or incomplete mutations. I was born with a physical mutation, but it must never have reached its intended conclusion. _He stopped, twisted the pen a moment, then added, _This is what I'm supposed to be. _

He remembered the face in the mirror. "What beast haff I become?" he muttered.

"Yourself," Frank told him softly. Reaching out, he took the writing tools from Henry and laid them down on the bedside, then took Hank's hand and held it up, placing his own against it, palm-to-palm. Not only was Henry's hand larger, but the fingers were longer, more apelike. "You are our friend," Frank said. "We will find the way through this, and we shall not forsake you."

"My caheeah?"

Frank held up the pad with his free hand. "Words. You still have your words,_ mi amico_. You still have published more articles this year than anyone else in your specialization. You are still Henri McCoy." He released Hank's hand and eyed him. "You are _not_ a beast. Unless it is the Cookie Monster."

And despite himself, Hank laughed. Then he cried. Frank sat with him for a long time, saying nothing else as shadows lengthened and the sun went down in watercolor streaks of blood red, obscene orange, and the deep purple of a bruise.

* * *

><p>"Something terrible has happened to Bruce!"<p>

Jean was shouting it almost before she got in the main foyer door, Warren right on her heels. Caught in rush-hour traffic, it had taken them almost two hours to get back to Westchester from midtown, and the grandfather clock in the hallway was about to chime seven.

"Professor!" Jean called. "Professor! Something's happened to Bruce!"

Everyone on the first floor came running, Xavier in his chair the last to arrive, and right there on the grey-veined foyer marble, Jean laid down a selection of papers that she'd printed out earlier and had been studying in the car on the drive back. "Here, here and here!" she said, pointing to three lines of numbers that, of course, meant absolutely nothing to anyone else present.

"Begin at the beginning, Jean," the professor suggested.

Looking up from where she knelt, she met his eyes. "What happened to Hank. It happened to Bruce, too. I'm almost sure of it. That wave mutated them. I wouldn't have thought of it, if I hadn't seen Hank in the hospital but - " Abruptly, she interrupted herself to ask, "How is Hank?"

"Hank is fine," said a new voice on the main spiral staircase. Having heard the shouting below, Francesco and Henry had come to investigate and now Frank was helping him down the stairs.

"Hank!" Jean yelled, darting up the stairs to throw her arms around him with great enthusiasm, if no little care. It wasn't the reception he'd expected, but it was the one he'd needed, and he put an arm around her, too, hugging her back.

"What papeas?" he asked, still adjusting to the new teeth.

"Copies of the printouts that Bruce was showing us earlier."

"Let me see."

So Jean and Frank helped him to descend the rest of the way, then sat him down on the final step so that Jean could move the papers closer, pointing out the crucial results. "What haffened to Buce?" he asked, almost idly, as he picked up and shuffled through the printouts. _Focus, focus,_ he thought. The papers gave him something on which to focus the one thing that hadn't changed - his mind.

"I'm not sure exactly," Jean explained, glancing back at Warren. "I didn't see him. I'm not entirely sure it _was_ him but -" She gestured silently at Hank, who just stared at her a moment. "He's _green_."

"Green?" the rest echoed.

"Big and green," Warren added, "or that's how one of the Hammer Center secretaries described him. Apparently, he was hiding in a supply closet and when she opened it, he ran out. We - Jean and I and some other students - heard a growl and then her scream all the way up on the floor above. By the time we got there, he was gone. But whatever happened, he scared the daylights out of her. She called him a 'big green thing.'"

"And what makes you think this was Bruce Banner?" the professor asked.

"Bruce's body wasn't found," Jean said. "A cop came to take my statement before I left ER. He admitted that Ted Roberts had been found - " she choked, then went on, "had been found dead at the scene. But apparently Hank and I were the only other people in the room. No Bruce. And" - she indicated Hank again - "the wave changed Hank. I think it changed Bruce, too."

"But it didn't change you, Jean. And Bruce Banner is not a mutant," the professor pointed out.

"Maybe he was," Hank said, and they all turned to stare at him. Pulling out the pad he'd grabbed, he wrote, _One impact of the wave is to complete mutations in partially mutated individuals. That is the only explanation I can think of for my own state. My mutation at birth was partial, and for whatever reason, never finished. But the other impact of the wave is to bring about mutations in latent mutants. Bruce hadn't yet told Jean this, but his son is a mutant. It's part of what spurred his original interest in mutations. While running some DNA scans, he discovered that Brian carries the X-gene; he's simply not old enough yet to manifest. Yet that means either Bruce or Betty carry a recessive, and I think we know now which of them it is. _

"It's got to be Bruce," Jean agreed. "He must have woken before the paramedics arrived, or he was never knocked out at all. He saw what'd happened and panicked - went to hide in that closet."

Hank nodded. "Could be."

Neither voiced their private thoughts: it was very unlike Bruce to run. He'd never before ducked his responsibilities, or a fight - at least not an academic fight - but waking up green might have been more than he'd been prepared to face.

Jean glanced back at Hank. "Why didn't he ever tell me about Brian?"

This time, Hank shook his head. "Phivat." He wrote, _I think he would have eventually, but not while you were a student of his. _

Jean pondered that. Bruce had always been old-fashioned about some things. "We have to find him," Jean said, "before he gets hurt." She turned to the professor. "If he's a mutant now, can you find him with Cerebro?"

The professor nodded. "I can certainly try."

* * *

><p>"Hey, Slim - phone!"<p>

Scott wandered out of his bedroom where he'd been studying for an exam. This was the first summer that EJ hadn't returned to LA, supposedly because he wanted to get some gen ed classes out of the way, but Scott thought the real reason had more to do with the fact that Diane had elected to spend the summer in Berkeley.

Scott took the receiver to the kitchen phone. Its long cord had been twisted into impossible pretzels. "Hello?"

"Scott? It is Ro. There was an accident in the Hammer Building - "

"_What? _Is Jean okay?" Scott interrupted.

On the other end of the line, Ororo smiled to herself. In small gestures were the hearts of men revealed. "Jean is fine. Hank is . . . going to be fine." She hoped. "Sadly, Ted Roberts was killed, and we are uncertain what became of Bruce - though Jean and Hank have a theory."

"Something happened in the lab?" he demanded.

"Yes. The new machine exploded. The cause is not known."

"Shit." He turned around to look at EJ, who was chopping broccoli on a cutting board as he listened with a concerned frown. Scott mouthed, _Jean's all right_, and EJ nodded. "So what's their theory?"

"That Bruce underwent a mutation himself."

"_What?_"

Ororo explained in brief what Jean and Warren had seen at the Hammer Building, Hank's theory, and also Hank's own transformation. Scott just listened until she got to the part about Hank. "He's _blue_?"

"Who's blue?" EJ asked.

"Hank's blue! Ro says that Hank's turned blue!"

"Whoa - "

"_It seems,_" Ororo interrupted over the phone line to drag back Scott's attention, "that Henry's mutation was unfinished. Scott, we must try to find Bruce Banner, if that was, indeed, the doctor."

"I'm flying back there," Scott said. He had no idea how fast he could get a ticket, but renting a plane for himself was out of the question at such short notice.

"Do not bother. Warren is already on the way out to get you. That is why I am calling. You will need to drive to the San Pablo Reservoir picnic grounds."

"Why?" He was baffled. "It's closed at night, Ro."

"We know. That is why we are using it. I do not think they will let this plane enter the local airport."

"Huh?" But the reason for that hit him before she could reply. "Wait a minute! He's not bringing the _Blackbird_? I didn't know it was ready! Or that you'd tested it!"

"It is ready, but this is the first flight it has taken."

"No fucking way! Crippled Christ on a crutch! Don't let him off the ground - "

"He has left already."

"He's crazy!" Scott Summers, son of an air force test pilot, was nearly livid. "You don't take up a newly refitted plane at night _and_ fly it all the way across the goddamn country!" Especially not that plane. "He's not trying to fly it at mach speed, is he?"

"It is an emergency," was Ororo's simple answer.

Scott sighed; there was no use crying over spilled milk. He just hoped to God that Warren and the Habu made it out to California in one piece. "When did he leave?"

"Two hours ago. So you have slightly less than two hours to travel to meet him."

"Fine. I'll be waiting."

Scott hung up and turned to face EJ. "I need a favor, man. I need you to drive me up to San Pablo Reservoir State Park."

EJ looked out the window at the setting sun. "Slim, it's almost dark. It'll be closed soon."

"Yeah, I know. That's the idea."

* * *

><p>Scott and EJ arrived with time and to spare, which was a good thing; with the park closed, they had to hide the car and climb the fence to get in. "What are we waiting on, man?"<p>

Scott didn't want to spoil the surprise. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you." EJ's answering expression was disgusted, and Scott felt guilty. "Sorry. It's an SR-71, rebuilt and remodeled."

"A what?"

Scott had to laugh. Of course EJ wouldn't know. Planes were Scott's obsession. "It's a Blackbird."

"Never heard of it."

"You won't see it, either, until it's on top of you. Fastest plane the air force ever built and the second highest-flying plane in the world. A Russian MIG goes higher, but the Blackbird's a beauty."

That won a smile from EJ. "You're plane-drunk, Slim."

"Runs in the family."

"I guess."

Twenty minutes later, the 'bird was there, coming in low and slow from the north, a darker shadow on a dark sky until the landing spots came on. Warren set it down in an open field and Scott held his breath as the landing gear descended for the first time since its refit. His father had told him more than once that every Habu had a temper of her own and that her pilot had better learn to finesse her. Landing a plane this powerful was like courting a fickle girl - make the wrong move and one was dead.

Though her descent was rough, the plane remained in one piece as she touched down and tore up dirt. "How long he been flying, man?" EJ asked as the 'bird came to a final tail-wagging stop.

"It's a field, not a runway, Eeeej. And that plane's not like any other." Scott shook his head. "I can't believe he brought her down for the first time _here_. I just hope we can get up again."

EJ eyed him, expression genuinely concerned. "You sure about this?"

Scott shrugged, repeating the same thing Ororo had said on the phone. "It's an emergency." But when he boarded the bay-gutted, revamped cockpit to take the newly installed co-pilot's seat, his hands were shaking. "How'd she fly?" he asked his friend, deliberately casual. It was better than, 'Are we gonna die in a bright, fiery ball?'

"She's cantankerous," Warren replied, strapping back in, "But the daf-ek Hank reinstalled has worked great. No unstarts and the APW didn't shake the stick once."

"Terrific," Scott muttered _sotto voce_. "How many times have you practiced in a sim, War?"

"Enough. And with all the scenarios."

Nonetheless, lift-off wasn't much better than the landing had been, and Scott gripped his armrests as they barely cleared the tops of the tall cedars. "Jesus, Mary and Joseph," he muttered.

"Can it. Unless you want to fly her." Warren was tight-lipped and as white in the face as Scott.

"Yeah, actually, I would."

"What?" Surprised, Warren glanced around.

"I'd like to fly her." And Scott did want it. Desperately. His fingers stroked the slick inner skin of her hull.

"When was the last time _you_ did a simulation, hotshot?"

Scott thought about it. "On the computer? Day before yesterday." He had not, in fact, been in the sim machine itself since Christmas, but he was rather embarrassed to admit how often he ran the adapted simulator that Hank had sent him.

Silence reigned for a minute, then Warren said, "Okay, you can fly her a little. But let me get us to cruising altitude, and I'm going to land her."

"That's fine."

They flew at 45,000 feet, but below the subsonic range when Warren carefully let Scott slip into the pilot's seat and turned over the plane to him. As Scott's hands closed on the control stick, he felt a shiver go through him. He was in the pilot seat of a Habu. A modified Habu, but a Habu all the same. "Hey, baby," he whispered. She trembled under his hands, her AB engines roaring so hot they turned their own interiors translucent and shook his teeth. But she trembled because this was too slow for her. She wasn't made for tortoise speeds. _Free me_, she sang to him through the metal. He raised her nose, advanced the throttle and opened her up.

"Whoa!" Warren said, plopping down into the other chair as she leapt forward. "What the fuck are you doing?"

"Taking her to a speed she wants to go."

"Scott - !"

"I was born for this, War." And he was - a combination of his father's genetics, his lesser-sung mutant abilities, and an instinct for the stratosphere. He watched the plane's speed pass the sonic barrier and then approach the critical 1.6 as inlet spikes unlocked and moved aft of their forward position. This was it, he thought. They'd either unstart the engines and be knocked all over the sky, or she'd straighten out like a greyhound.

She straightened out, vibrating with a cat's purr of pure power. _Take me home, baby_, he thought to her.

They flew through the night, very high, her engines making quartz-blue flames in the darkness.

* * *

><p>On the long flight, Warren filled in Scott more thoroughly on everything that had transpired since the accident. By the time they touched down on the little private landing strip by the lake, it was the wee hours of morning, but the lights were still on in the mansion. They entered through the rear kitchen door and Scott was met with a bear hug first from Ororo, then from Jean. Scott held onto Jean a bit longer than he might have normally, then asked, "You okay? I'm sorry about - "<p>

"I'm all right," she interrupted, pushing him away. She didn't want to discuss Ted Roberts and knew that was what he'd ask about. How she knew it, she didn't pause to consider. "Come see Hank." She took him by the hand and led him out of the kitchen. "And whatever you do, don't wince."

"I won't."

The dark-wood hall between kitchen and den was dim and haunted with uncertainties as the four of them made their way down to where a still-weak Henry McCoy was propped on the den couch with pillows and blankets and warm tea. The professor was with him, and Frank and Bobby, and all the room's lights were on. He was both more and less shocking than Scott had expected, though in truth, Scott's expectations had been indistinct, like a child's fear of monsters in the closet.

Hank was no monster at all. He'd gained significant body mass but his facial features were still familiar - all but the mouth. That looked slightly stretched. The greatest change was the color of the new fur; it appeared purple to Scott, though Ororo and Warren had both said it was blue. The skin beneath also seemed to have changed as his lips were purple, too, though the hair on his head was the same dark shade it'd always been. Then again, Scott thought, if his own beard could be auburn while his hair was brown, maybe the contrast of Hank's body fur to his scalp hair was the same.

Face blank by force of will, Scott walked over to seat himself on the edge of the coffee table that fronted the sofa. "How are you?" he asked - a foolish question, but the only one he could think of to express his concern.

Hank didn't quite look at him, glancing somewhere indefinite over his left shoulder instead. "I suppose I sssall be seeking a new address on Sesame Street."

Unsure how to reply to that, and embarrassed and half-guilty, Scott looked away. The rest of the room was silent. Abruptly, Hank sighed. It was loud. "I know, I know. Self-pity is _so_ unbecoming."

It was Frank who dared to reply. "But understandable."

And no one immediately replied to that, either. After a space of ten breaths, Scott asked, "So if this big, green . . . person . . . _is_ Dr. Banner, how do we find him? He may be big, but New York is bigger."

"I believe I can help, on that score," the professor said.

* * *

><p>Fort Tryon itself, built on Manhattan's highest point, dated back to the Revolutionary war, but only the ruined foundations remained on the banks of the Hudson across the river from the New Jersey Palisades. Even that might have been swallowed by the burgeoning New York metropolis but for the sixty-two acres surrounding the fort that had been purchased by John D. Rockefeller in 1909, and given to the city in 1930 for a park; the landscaping had been done by Frederick Law Olmsted, the same man who'd designed Central Park. Yet the public draw of Ft. Tryon wasn't the historic ruins, but The Cloisters, a mammoth sub-branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art built in the chunky, forbidding style of medieval French monasteries, and housing (appropriately) art and artifacts of the Middle Ages. The Cloisters was located centrally at the park top, while numerous paths led up and down hills, some of them so steep that walkways had to be bordered by stone walls. There was a rock garden at the south entrance near the old fort, a stone gazebo, a café, a terrace, and a pair of sizable playgrounds, all in addition to the lawns, groves, chasms, and gardens one would expect to find. Here at the height of summer, the trees and bushes were leafy and verdant, providing extensive cover so that, after dark and even with a half moon and the ever-present glow of the city, it was still pitch black in areas.<p>

It was also closed, so getting inside had been an adventure, but this was where Cerebro had pinpointed Bruce Banner, and this was where they'd come, hoping to find and fetch him back to the mansion at a time of night when he wouldn't attract too much unwanted attention. Jean was armed with an oversized coat and a hat. It wasn't perfect, but after dark, it might be sufficient to conceal someone big, and green. Only Hank and Bobby hadn't come, Hank because he was too wounded - never mind blue - and Bobby because he was too young. Scott led Ororo, Frank, Jean and Warren into the park while the professor drove the handicap-modified Bentley about the neighborhood, waiting. Dawn was only an hour and a half away, so they had to find Bruce quickly. They split up into two groups, but even so, the park would have been too large for them to canvas in that time, so the professor helped them better narrow the area of their search. They knew that Banner was on the western, or elevated side of the park, near the museum. At Scott's suggestion, they were wearing the protective gear that had been designed for them - dark clothes to cover most of their exposed skin, and the kevlar vests. Jean had protested, "Scott, it's Bruce, not some strange and dangerous mutant."

But Scott had shaken his head. "It's not Bruce I'm worried about; it's the other crazies." Scott was still amazed that Banner had managed to make it from the medical center to Ft. Tryon Park at rush hour without attracting attention.

In fact, the big, green man _had_ attracted attention, but New Yorkers being New Yorkers, they'd assumed him involved in filming a movie or some sort of publicity campaign, so he'd traveled two blocks west to Ft. Washington Park without anyone calling the police, then moved north through the park grounds until he'd been able to cross into the much larger, more densely landscaped Ft. Tryon Park where his own panicked suspicion had made him avoid joggers and tourists until sunset had emptied the paths. Now, hunger had driven him out to prowl and he made a midnight snack of unfinished popcorn, half-eaten granola bars, and abandoned chili dogs, leaving a trail of plundered trash cans that Scott and Jean picked up near Linden Terrace and followed like a reversal of Hansel and Gretel. "I can't believe he's eating trash," Jean said, after the third overturned bin.

Scott was more concerned by the fact that Bruce was casually upending concrete containers than by the fact he was eating someone's half-finished dinner. Fists on hips, he studied one of the displaced canisters lying on its side not far from a sign that read (ironically), _Let no one say, and say it to your shame, that all was beauty here, until you came. _"He's probably really hungry. When was the last time he ate? Noon?"

"No doubt, but Scott, it's _garbage_. He's a doctor. He knows how unsanitary that is." And she fastidiously wrinkled her pretty nose. "I'd think he'd have to be a good deal hungrier than a missed supper before he'd eat out of the trash!"

It was yet another clue in the case Jean was reluctantly building that more was wrong with her old advisor than a change in skin tone. The Bruce she knew would never have threatened a secretary, no matter how frightened he was. And the Bruce she knew wouldn't be eating out of the trash unless he were a good deal more hungry and desperate. Moreover, the Bruce she knew would've made some effort to contact someone, not hole up in a park for hours on end. Perhaps he didn't have his cell, but she'd seen a few scattered pay phones since entering the grounds. Why hadn't he at least tried to call his wife collect? Jean had phoned Betty Ross-Banner from the mansion only to find her frantic, with no idea about what had happened to her husband.

Standing on one of the many paths, Jean squinted off through the trees. They made a black wall all around them and the beam of her flashlight barely pierced the foliage. Crickets sang their night songs and she could smell the heavy perfume of summer jasmine. Dressed in a long-sleeved shirt, pants and the heavy kevlar, she was hot, and pushed up her shirt sleeves as she followed Scott. The white X on the back of his vest glowed faintly in the moonlight. It really did look like a big target mark.

Scott had raised his little wrist communicator and now spoke into it. "Anything?"

"Nothing," came back Warren's voice in a static-distorted warble.

"We've found some emptied trash bins between the terrace and the rock garden but no further sign of Dr. Banner."

"Why do you assume emptied trash bins have anything to do with Banner? Might be dogs."

"They're a couple hundred pounds of concrete turned upside down, War. Find me the dog who can do that."

"Oh."

"Yeah, 'oh.' Let's converge on the trail headed up towards The Cloisters." He hesitated, then added, "Be careful," before closing the connection. He and Jean turned back and followed the Promenade north towards the looming complex of buildings above them, the yellow-white beams of their flashlights dancing across the landscape around them.

"Shall we call to him?" Jean asked after a while. "He might not know who we are otherwise."

It was a good suggestion, and Scott might have agreed, but before he could reply something large and hulking crashed through the bushes to their right and leapt onto the path in front of them, pounding his chest Tarzan-style and snarling. Already on edge, Jean squeaked and stumbled backwards, falling onto her ass on the sidewalk, her flashlight rolling away and the overcoat falling from her grasp. Scott jumped in front of her, hand on his visor trigger, "Dr. Banner! We're not here to hurt you." He could only hope that the seven-foot, snarling, man-shaped creature was, in fact, the mutated Bruce Banner, but when he swung up his flashlight into the other's eyes to blind him temporarily, the beam did reveal skin a brilliant grass green.

"Bruce, it's Jean!" She'd recovered her equilibrium and her feet rapidly enough. "We want to help!"

Between the light in his eyes and the use of his name, Banner hesitated. "Who you?" he asked.

The childlike puzzlement in his face, the poor grammar, and the fact - just registering with them both - that he wore not a stitch of clothing on his body, sealed Jean's suspicion that more than his physical form had altered. "Bruce, it's Jean," she repeated, hands spread in a placating way as she moved a few steps past Scott. Scott grabbed for her but she shook him off. "It's Jean Grey. Your former student, Jean Grey? Do you remember me? We want to help you. We want to take you someplace safe."

Bruce Banner was wary, but he did recognize his own name, and the young woman seemed familiar, though he understood less than half of what she'd said. He understood 'safe,' at least, and as she held nothing dangerous in her outstretched hands, he took a step towards her. Smiling, she continued, "Betty asked us to find you. Betty and Brian are really worried, Bruce. They want you to come home."

Betty. He remembered Betty. Soft hair, soft breasts, pretty smile. Betty. And for the first time in hours, both fear and hostility drained out of Banner. Pretty Betty. But she wouldn't like to see him like this. She wouldn't love him anymore like this. He sat down heavily on the grass verge, knees up and forearms on them, giving Jean a clearer view of his privates than she'd ever wanted. "Betty," he whispered, great sorrow in his voice. "Betty no see me like this."

Whatever he'd lost intellectually, he clearly still understood shame of one kind, if not another. Jean moved closer yet, squatting down to put herself on his level, close enough to touch. "Bruce, Betty loves you. She just wants to know that you're safe."

"No see me like this!" Banner's sorrow was transforming back into fear, and anger.

"Jean - " Scott warned.

She waved him silent and tried again, thinking that they had to get Banner out of this park, back to the mansion - and lab - where she and Hank could find some way to restore his memories, and his intellect. "Betty won't be angry. We want to help you. We want to take you someplace safe where we can feed you" - Banner's expression perked up at that - "and then we can call Betty and Brian and - "

She got no further. In an instant, Banner's mood shifting from interest into rage and he leapt at Jean, knocking her onto her back even as Ororo, Frank and Warren came hurrying up the path from the opposite direction, having been called by the commotion. "Jean!" Scott shouted, stepping back to get off a shot even while the other three stared in confusion.

But though Banner was holding Jean by the throat, he didn't seem to be hurting her beyond that and Scott hesitated. Banner, however - hearing the others approaching and realizing that he was hemmed in - shouted, "Trick me! You trick me!"

"No, Bruce," Jean managed to choke out, "They won't hurt you," even as Scott said, "Let her go, Dr. Banner."

Warren had spread his hands in an unconscious imitation of Jean earlier, "We're not your enemies."

"Sneaky!" Banner retorted, and lifting Jean a few inches by the neck, he slammed her down against the sidewalk. Scott heard her skull connect with the asphalt and fear squeezed his heart.

"No, Scott!" Frank called. "If you shoot - "

But Scott had already triggered his visor. A low-impact beam struck Banner to knock him off Jean, but Scott hadn't counted on Banner's grip, and both Banner _and_ Jean were blown across the path onto the grass and almost down into a ditch. Furious now, Banner stood up yowling and charged Scott, who shot again, a little harder, knocking Banner back against a tree. Ororo began to whip up a wind; it pulled at branches and rustled leaves. Frank stood beside her while Warren hurried over to kneel by Jean, helping her to sit up. She was rubbing at her throat.

Ororo's winds were getting stronger, pushing Banner back as he tried to push forward, yelling furiously, "You trick! Me smash!" But the winds were safer than Scott's blasts. Scott wasn't sure what to do now.

"Dr. Banner," he called. "You've got to stop. We won't call Betty if you don't want, but you've got to let us help you!"

"You no help! You sneaky! You sneaky up on Bruce and hurt him! Me smash!"

"No, Bruce! You were strangling Jean! I had to get you off her. I didn't hit you as hard as I could and I wasn't trying to hurt you. Stop fighting us and we'll take you somewhere you can eat, somewhere you'll be safe - "

A shot interrupted. Nothing mutant - quite a normal gun blast, followed by a second, then a third. The body of Bruce Banner jerked three times as dark blood bloomed on the bare skin of his left arm, upper chest, and shoulder. It would have felled a normal man. Banner merely screamed louder and leapt at the one who'd fired - a security guard who'd been on duty up at The Cloisters and, hearing their shouts, had feared gangs and called the police, then come to investigate. In the darkness of the trees, and focused as they were on Banner, none of them had seen him approach.

Now, Banner grabbed him by the neck before he could get off a fourth shot and raised him high, closing the fist. Bones crunched as the man's neck was pulverized; it was the most sickening sound Scott had ever heard. Then Banner threw the body sideways into the bushes before turning to face the five of them, growling like a furious grizzly. "Tricky! Tricky!" Blood was dripping down his skin and caught by their flashlight beams, it made an obscene Christmas-toned contrast. "Hurt me!"

"He wasn't with us!" Scott called, knowing it was futile, even while he became aware of sirens in the distance.

Banner could hear the sirens, too, and they panicked him. Despite his wounds and belying his new size, he sprinted up the path towards The Cloisters. "Get out of the way!" Scott bellowed at Ororo and Frank. Ororo leapt. Frank didn't. Face undecided, he stood rooted to the ground for three precious seconds. A great, green arm swept out and Banner knocked him flying so that his body crashed into the bushes to the side of the path and rolled down the incline. "Frank!" Ororo cried, racing after him as Banner disappeared around a corner.

"Should I see where Banner went?" Warren asked.

Scott made a sharp negating gesture and trotted over to where Warren still sat with Jean. "What a fucking mess," he snarled, though he was angry with himself, not them. "War, go help Ororo with Frank. Get him back up to the path, then we'll decide what to do next."

Warren hurried off as Scott directed his flashlight beam so he could see without blinding Jean, and peered into her face. "How are you?"

"Can't talk," she whispered, fingering her bruised neck. "Sorry. He might have listened to me."

Scott just shook his head. "Not after that idiot shot him."

"He killed that man." Jean's dark eyes were tearing. "He was a doctor, Scott. He _saved_ lives." It struck them both at the same moment that she'd just spoken of Banner in the past tense. "Oh, God. That's not Bruce. That . . . _thing_ isn't Bruce."

Scott shook his head and helped her to stand even as Warren and Ororo returned, Frank in Warren's arms. "He broke his leg, I think," Warren said. "And he's out cold."

"_Shit!_" Scott wanted to hit something. They'd lost Banner, the sirens sounded right outside the park now, and one of their own was wounded. "Warren - in the air. Get out of the park and back to the professor with Frank. Tell him what's happened so far if he doesn't know already." He'd been monitoring them mentally. "Ororo, Jean, you're with me. I don't know what we can do about Banner, but we've got to do something. That guy shot him three times and it didn't even slow him down."

The others all nodded, unconsciously submitting to Scott's command even though no one had put him in charge. Warren rose up into the night sky with Frank still in his grip while Jean and Ororo watched him expectantly. "I'm not sure what to do aside from going after him," Scott said. "Well, that and trying to stay away from the police. This time, we're sticking together." And he led them up the path. Jean left behind the hat and overcoat; they seemed a futile gesture now.

The police arrived within minutes, converging on The Cloisters and hoping for a report from the hapless security guard. Finding him missing, they began a search of the area while Scott, Jean and Ororo stayed well away, hoping that Banner had turned in some other direction and that they'd find him before the police did. But surprised shouts and a sharp interruption of gunshot told them luck wasn't on their side. Crouching in the shadow of Linden Terrace, Scott studied the remnants of his team - Jean who could barely speak, and Ororo whose concentration was now divided between their mission and worry for Frank. Dawn was approaching. "Ro, can you raise a fog from the river? Give some cover for as long as possible?" She nodded and did as instructed, an unseasonal and eerie white creeping over the Henry Hudson Parkway below and then up the steep bank to curl across the ground into the park trees. Scott could hear more sirens on the way, and there were shouts in the distance as police called to one another. Banner must have run again.

"Which way will he go?" Scott muttered. Banner wouldn't flee like Scott or any other adult would. He apparently had the mind of a child and would run like a child - which meant a straight line directly away from the threat, probably through the park towards the exit. Perhaps their luck was turning and they could get him outside to the professor . . . or so he thought until he heard the whup-whup of approaching helicopter blades. "Fuck!" Grabbing both girls by the wrist, he dragged them after him, saying, "Stay under cover of the trees! They're bringing in a chopper with a searchlight!" The three of them might not do Banner much good by hiding, he knew, but getting caught themselves would make them even more useless.

Within minutes, a bright white light sliced across the open grass and the tops of trees, and the three of them could hear the sounds of a chase approaching as bodies crashed through brush and feet pounded down paths, one set quite close to their hiding place. They could hear the men call to one another, "He was headed southwest to the river, through the pine grove!"

Scott exchanged a glance with Jean and Ororo, then pointed wordlessly in the same direction the cops were headed. The three of them set out after the cops. The men were making so much noise trying to keep up with Banner, they'd never realize they were being trailed.

"And what shall we do when we find them all?" Ororo whispered to Scott.

"I haven't got a clue, but I'm open to suggestions."

"We have to keep Bruce from killing anyone else," Jean said, voice cracking.

"Shhh," Scott scolded. "Quit straining your voice."

Jean shook her head and stopped, forcing the other two to stop as well; they came back to see what she wanted, peering at her through the darkness. "We can't let him kill again," she said, voice barely ghosting out. "Bruce wouldn't want that. I know he wouldn't. We have to stop this . . . creature."

"Assuming we can stop him, what if the police _catch_ him then?" Scott asked. "No telling what they'll do to him!"

She nodded and waved, swallowing painfully. "Then they catch him. It's what he'd want, Scott. No more killing."

_So be it,_ Scott thought, but remembering the upended concrete trash bins, he doubted the police had anything here that could hold Banner. A pair of steel handcuffs? The idea was laughable.

They went on.

The cops had Banner cornered on Billings Lawn not far from a high bank above the Hudson and just west of the old fort. The chopper circled overhead, two searchlights focused down, reflecting off the fog as a good dozen police officers ringed the furious and protesting green creature. One of the police used a bullhorn to urge Banner to surrender.

"Yeah, like he's going to give up and go meekly," Scott muttered from where he, Ororo and Jean peered out from the shadow cover of the pine grove.

But if the megaphone demands weren't eliciting any positive response, Banner also hadn't attacked anyone yet, and he wasn't, Scott thought, inherently dangerous. He was just confused and frustrated and angry. He'd killed the security guard because the man had hurt him, not because he was mean. "If they'd just quit harassing him," Scott said, "they might get somewhere. He's like a four-year-old having a tantrum."

"A very big four-year-old," Ororo added. "They are scared of him, and he is scared of them. It is not a good situation."

"And we're stuck here where we can't do a damn thing." There was no Warren to drop down and effect another angelic rescue, even if Warren had been able to lift a seven-foot green giant who was quite a long way from jolly. "I have no tricks up my sleeve."

Ororo clasped his arm gently. "You are not a magician, Scott Summers."

"We came in unprepared! We didn't know what we'd be facing!" he hissed.

"Exactly," she said. "We did not know what we would be facing." She shook her head. "Even Frank could not see. Or he saw too many things. He will blame himself as badly as you."

She was right; Frank would, and Scott subsided, though his fingers continued to pick at the ground beneath his feet, digging nervous furrows in the dirt. "Too bad his wife isn't here - Dr. Banner's wife, I mean. She's probably the only one who could calm him down right now."

Beside Scott, Jean whispered, "That's it!" and rose up from where they were crouched. "I'll go tell them to call Betty."

"Jean, no!"

"Scott, you just said it yourself, we need Betty to calm him down."

"Yeah, but there's theoretical and then there's doable!"

"We have to try! Getting Betty is a good idea!"

And Scott might have let her go if the question hadn't been made moot by the arrival of new reinforcements. These had dogs who barked and snarled and leapt at the ends of their leashes, enraging Banner further. Grabbing an ornamental bench from the edge of a path, Banner laid about him with it so that dogs and handlers scattered. Then he flung the bench at one edge of the encircling noose of cops and they scattered as well. He escaped through the gap, racing almost due west towards the river.

"No!" Jean cried out - fortunately at nothing louder than a croak as Scott and Ororo both grabbed her to keep her from rushing out where she'd be seen, even as police opened fire on the fleeing figure of Banner and the dogs were released to give chase.

But only a handful of police were shooting; the rest were in mild disarray. The police chopper was another matter. It circled out and down to hover off the edge of the park embankment above the parkway below, keeping its spots on Banner as he ran. Behind Banner, the police regrouped and followed. Scott would have followed as well, but there was little cover between the pine grove and the park edge.

The chopper's placement proved strategic, but not for the police. Dogs at his very heels, Banner leapt straight out from at the grassy embankment of the park edge that overlooked the Henry Hudson Parkway below, and the river beyond that. His burly arms sought and found the landing gear of the helicopter, clinging like a leech and making it swing wildly in the air as the pilot struggled to compensate. It might have been a spectacular getaway, except the police were right behind and what a few shots from a security guard's .45 couldn't manage, a barrage of fire from high-powered rifles could. Bullet spray struck Banner's naked torso, causing him to jerk convulsively where he clung to the landing gear. For a moment, he hung on, but then his grip slipped as his consciousness failed and his body plummeted downward, missing the parkway to splash into the gray waters of the Hudson itself.

Watching from even a hundred feet back, horror struck Scott mute as Jean broke into croaking sobs beside him. Meanwhile, the police had rushed to the edge of the cliff to look down, and streetwise Ororo recognized their chance. Tapping Scott's shoulder and getting hold of Jean's arm, she led them back inside the grove's concealment, out the other side, and then down paths until they spied a dark overhang of rock screened well by vines and boxwood. There, they hunkered down to wait for full dawn, and Jean cried helplessly in Scott's lap.

There were a few close calls as searchers passed near their hiding place while looking for the body of the missing security guard. Scott wasn't sure why they didn't stop to check the hollow. Did they not realize it was there, or had the professor somehow gently 'redirected' their attention? Xavier was still out there, keeping tabs on them, waiting the same as they were. Finally, the guard's body was found, the police reopened the park to visitors, and Scott, Jean and Ororo crept from their hiding place, doffing the kevlar vests and folding them over to hide the X-target, then making their way to the nearest exit. They said little to one another - had said little all morning, their faces pulled somber by defeat. Scott held Jean's hand the whole way but Ororo remained aloof, resisting his touch. "It is not the first time I have seen a man shot," she told him once, harshly, then apologized a few minutes later when they reached the sidewalk outside.

"It's okay," Scott told her.

The professor had arrived with the Bentley in any case, pulling up to the curb so they could pile into the back and sprawl in overheated exhaustion. "Where is Frank?" Ororo asked.

"Warren took him back to the mansion."

Ororo nodded and stared out one tinted window as Jean laid her head on Scott's shoulder, short hair hiding her tear-stained face. Xavier studied them all in the rearview mirror. "You did your best," he told them as he put the car in gear. "That is all that we can ever expect of ourselves, children. And even so, sometimes, we fail."

"A man's dead, Professor," Scott said, not in the mood for platitudes.

"Yes," Xavier replied. "But you neither killed him nor caused him to die. And you did try to save his life. Learn to recognize the limits of your responsibility, son, or like Agamemnon, you'll be guilty of _hubris_."


	15. Pomp and Circumstance

Exhausted in body and heart, all three of Xavier's wards were asleep in the back of the Bentley by the time he reached Westchester. He hated to wake them, but it was necessary. _Children_, he sent into their minds. _We are home. You should go to your rooms and sleep. _

Ororo was the first awake, a bit startled. "Frank - "

" - is fine. Warren returned him safely home, and while Henry is wounded, he is not incapacitated. He set Francesco's leg, gave him some pain-killers, and ordered him to rest. You should join him."

Nodding, Ororo got out, followed by Scott and Jean, stupid with lack of sleep, though Scott retained enough presence of mind to fetch Xavier's wheelchair for him. Xavier thanked him, then shooed him off. As tired as Charles was himself, he had age on his side. He never slept more than five hours on any given night, and was perfectly comfortable with that. His first order of business was to discover what was known, what wasn't known, and what would be necessary to do, in order to protect his children.

Upstairs, Jean barely pulled off her shoes before collapsing on her bed. Yet she dozed and woke, dozed and woke, fitful in the heat and clammy with sweat, until finally, in the late-afternoon, she woke a final time and left her room. Pushing open a door catty-corner down the hall, she entered Scott's room without knocking. Why she'd come there, she couldn't have explained, but at some primal level, Scott represented comfort to her. The westering sun fell in the window, making stark blocks of butter yellow on the mahogany furniture and the carpets. Scott lay sprawled on his stomach, on top of the sheets. He'd taken off his shirt but that was all, and he looked to be as warm as she, his face all flushed and his hair damp. His duffle bag lay in a chair where he'd dropped it before they'd left, but otherwise, the room had an appearance of hibernation, decorated by the generic and what had been left behind. Scott no longer lived here. It struck her like blow beneath the breastbone.

She crawled up onto the bed anyway, and he woke a little, peering at her through his goggles. She could see the faint light of his open eyes. "Jean?" His voice was throaty with sleep.

"Bad dreams," she replied and snuggled down beside him without asking, her back to his front while his arm snaked around her to pull her closer, like a plush toy, as chaste as siblings. She cried a little. "I've missed you." He didn't reply, just stirred her hair with his breath and his fingers. After a while, she slept. So did he.

They woke again after the sun had gone down, their internal time clocks all disjointed. She turned to face him in the dimness of the bedroom and they lay nose to nose. His breath was sour with sleep. "Have you ever seen someone die?" he asked, blunt with his shock.

"Yes," she replied, almost without thinking.

He blinked - she could see the light behind his goggles disappear and reappear - then he said, "Yeah, I guess so. Dumb question. You're a doctor."

But that hadn't, actually, been what she'd meant. "No," she said now. "I mean, yes, sure, as a doctor. But once before, too." She stopped; he waited. She'd never before told him about Annie. It was her private nightmare, and he'd been young, a boy; she'd automatically protected him. But here, now, that fell away. She no longer saw him like a little brother, sometimes annoying, but dear. He was a man - young, but a man - and last night, she'd bowed to his command of the situation without even thinking about it. He was her equal, her leader sometimes, her confidant. Her friend.

"Annie," she said now, as if that one name were ripe with the explanation of her whole self, and in a way, it was. "Annie Richardson. She lived across the street from me - well, sort of across the street. It's hard to explain. Her parents taught at Bard, too. We lived in the 'faculty ghetto,' but Annandale-on-Hudson isn't big and I think most of the town is involved with the college in some way."

"Like an air force base."

"A little. Annie was my best friend." Jean smiled. "I liked being at her house; I liked her parents. It was an escape for me. Her mom was the antithesis of mine - utterly 1960's Flower Child. Kate and Larry - her parents - had met in San Francisco in some kind of co-op, then had Annie. Her real name wasn't even Annie, but 'Anahita' after some Persian goddess."

"I don't blame her for going by Annie."

"I don't think she minded, really. She liked being different, but the fact that her parents had never formally married was a bigger scandal in our sleepy, little New England town. They were the kind of people you couldn't help but like, if you got to know them, but most people still talked about them behind their backs. "

"You liked the exotic." It wasn't a question.

She didn't give it a direct answer. "Over at Annie's house, I was allowed to do things my mother wouldn't even consider - bounce on the bed, run around outside with no shoes, eat spaghetti with my fingers, and play with tarot cards." She fell silent then, lost in speculative memory of what her life might have been, if not for an errant Frisbee and a speeding car.

When some time had passed, Scott finally prompted, "What happened?" The question was soft and gentle in the room's twilight.

"I felt her die."

"You _felt_ her die?"

Jean touched her forehead, as if somehow her fingertips could brush away the telepathic gift that had driven her mad. "I was ten; she'd just turned eleven. It was the summer before we went to middle school. We were playing outside. It was twilight - that time when it's too dark too see clearly but it's not really night yet. My mother had called me twice for dinner and I'd been ignoring her; we were playing Frisbee and listening to the radio over at Annie's house. I can remember just what was playing, too. REO Speedwagon, 'Keep on Loving You.' I still can't listen to that goddamn song."

She closed her eyes. He didn't push her, just waited while she circled this, tested the boundaries of old pain. He kept an arm around her, draped over her shoulder, and patted her back.

"I threw the Frisbee a little too hard, and it was too dark to see well, so Annie missed it and went running after it. Down the block a ways lived this boy - Terry Watson. He was a senior, and had this ugly old brown Impala, and he always used to come tearing around our corner with it like a bat out of hell."

And even though Scott had never heard this story before, he could guess what was coming. He held her a little closer.

"He hit her." It was simple. Three words, delivered flat. Scott moved his hand up to run fingers through her thin hair. In the background, he could hear the hum of the fan, stirring limpid air. "I'm sorry," he said finally, words pulled out by the weight of Jean's silence.

"The left front fender. It knocked her back into the yard. I ran over to her and Terry had stopped the car. He was yelling at us, at her, but he was scared more than angry. He wanted to blame her for being in the road, instead of himself for driving too fast, because he knew this wasn't a little thing. It wasn't a speeding ticket.

"And I _knew_ that, Scott. I didn't guess it; I wasn't told that later. I knew it, felt it, saw it in his mind. I yelled back at him to go call an ambulance. By that time, people were coming out of their houses, and Annie's mother was screaming. I knew what all of them were thinking - the shock, the fear, even the sick interest.

"Annie was bleeding everywhere, or that's what it seemed like to me then. You see it in accident victims a lot - a little blood forced out of the nose, mouth, ears, and eyes by the impact. It breaks the tiny capillaries in thin membranes. It scared me, and I could _feel_ her hurting. I'd pulled her up into my lap and held on. Now, I'd know better than to do that, but I don't think it would have made a difference. One whole side of her ribcage had been broken and the bones had punctured her right lung. She drowned on her own blood, but that took about five or ten minutes. Her mother was just hysterical, so I held her instead. She couldn't talk because she didn't have any air, and she was so frightened. There's no fear like not being able to breathe, and she didn't really know what was happening; it hurt too much for her to think, but she was pretty sure she was dying and she didn't want to die. So she was clutching at me" - Jean demonstrated unconsciously by gripping Scott's upper arms - "and then the blood stared coming out of her mouth . . . a lot more than had at first." Jean touched her chin, then began to cry.

"Shhh," Scott said, pulling her head against his shoulder because he really had no idea what else to do. What was he supposed to say to this? EJ would know, but Scott felt inadequate.

After some time had passed, Jean quieted, and said, "It was dark, where she went, but not scary. You hear people talk about white lights and all that, but I never saw any lights. We just kind of . . . sank down. Like we were at the bottom of a well - sitting cross-legged at the bottom of a well. And it didn't hurt there. It felt good. We were holding hands, just like friends do, but I knew she had to go. She didn't say anything to me - there wasn't any, 'I must go, but you must stay!' sermon. It was just . . . like at the end of the day, when I knew I'd have to go in soon, and I didn't want to. I'd rather have stayed with Annie, but it just wasn't an option. I felt her slip away finally. Her fingers left mine and she went . . . somewhere else. Maybe she saw the white light there, I don't know.

"Anyway, where I was, it was warm and dark and it didn't hurt and I just wasn't too interested in waking up.

"So I didn't. Not for a long time. Sixteen months." She felt his arms tense. "When Annie died I was ten. When I woke up again, I was twelve, and there were other people in my head. I thought I'd died after all, and gone straight to hell. I couldn't even tell what was me, and what wasn't. Forget sixteen personalities. I had hundreds. Whoever came near - nurses, patients, doctors. They put me in a sanitarium because they thought I was psychotic. 'Dissociative disorder with aspects of bipolar I' was my diagnosis. So I was out of my mind, my parents consulted half the psychiatrists in the State of New York, and Sarah - my older sister - was left pretty much to fend for herself. It's probably no great surprise that there isn't much love lost between Sarah and me now. It's not easy to be the sibling of a chronically ill child."

Abruptly, Jean sat up, sliding out of his arms to push her hair back from her face. "So now you know the story of Crazy Jean."

"You're not crazy," Scott said from the bed. "You survived."

"Barely. Dad heard about the professor through a mutual friend, and called him in desperation for a fourteenth opinion . . . forget second or third. Of course the professor knew exactly what was wrong with me. He shut down the telepathy entirely, like catching a roach under a Tupperware bowl."

Scott didn't miss the comparison of her gift to a parasite.

"_Then_, of course, the TK exploded. I was out of the hospital by then, and the professor had explained to my parents what I was. It's a good thing the telepathy and telekinesis didn't happen at once, or the doctors would've decided I was _possessed_, not just nuttier than a fruitcake. Can you imagine?"

"How old were you then?"

"Fifteen."

"You mean you made up all that school you lost in two years before college?" Scott was astonished.

Her smile was wry. "Three, actually. I went to college a year late, like you. But it's not that surprising. It wasn't like I had anything _else_ to do with my time, like oh, say, dates or football games or school dances. I never went to high school, Scott; I had private tutors. And I was able to do a little school in the psych ward. Plus, telepathy gives you a certain advantage. I picked up all kinds of odd things right out of people's heads. But I wonder if maybe what happened with Annie isn't why I went into medicine. I never want to be _helpless_ like that again, dammit."

Scott nodded, having heard of other people who became doctors for similar reason. In any case, and despite her disparaging comments, he was still astonished by how quickly she'd made up her educational void. He'd known she was smart, but it had never before come home to him quite so concretely.

Reaching out, he gripped one of her long hands again and rubbed the top of it with his thumb. "I think you're amazing." Frank, Ororo, now Jean . . . it made his own previous life seem blissfully easy, and the guilt of good fortune wrapped bands around his chest and squeezed until Jean lay back down beside him and stroked his cheek.

"Don't knock being normal, Scott. It's something about you that I've always liked - you're this perfectly normal guy. It's . . . nice . . . to have a friend like that."

Her hand was soft and he was suddenly very conscious of the fact that she was lying in his bed, touching his face. It struck right out of his mind any question of how she'd known he was feeling guilty. Three years ago, this would have been a fantasy come true. Now . . . he wasn't sure what he felt. She continued to stroke his cheek and he caressed her in turn, her shoulder, her arm, her hair. Their legs were intertwined. There was more in it than mere sibling attachment, but paramount was their need for human connection in the face of death, a reminder that their own hearts still beat. After a while, comfortable and still tired, first Scott, then Jean, fell asleep.

When they woke again, it was the middle of the night. As he'd fallen asleep first, Scott also woke first and tried to get out of bed without disturbing her, intending to shower, but she woke anyway and raised her head to look around in the moonlit room. "Unh?"

"Hey, sleepyhead."

"Scott?" Then she remembered and pushed herself up, slightly embarrassed. "Oh. Uh, sorry about barging in on you last night."

He'd turned to smile at her. "Hey, I don't mind. What are friends for?"

And she smiled back. They'd edged a little past the usual boundaries for friends the evening before, but if he was content not to go there, so was she. Exhaustion both physical and emotional had left her vulnerable, and while she didn't regret for a minute telling him about Annie, the sensual session that had followed had left her confused. However much she cared for him - and she always seemed to be brought back around by circumstance to how deeply that caring went - she'd never returned his infatuation. At least, not consciously. Her adolescence in a psych ward had schooled her well in how to shut away thoughts that weren't socially acceptable, and so she liked to forget that her first reaction to him, lying on his back in the mud after she'd hit him with her car, had been purely visceral. He'd been a pretty boy, and he'd become a prettier man, and the chemistry of attraction was neither predictable nor inclined to respect social boundaries. She'd never allowed herself to consider acting on it, though, nor had even allowed herself to recognize precisely what she felt. The chasm of age and life experience had been as real as the attraction, so sublimation had become the name of the game. Yet it was harder to sublimate when he wasn't a boy any more.

"I'm going to go shower," he said now.

"I should, too. I'll head back to my room. Meet me in the staff kitchen for a little breakfast at midnight?"

"You bet."

So she left him to himself, and whatever his easy responses, his own feelings upon waking beside her had been just as confused as hers. He'd thought himself over her, at least in any romantic sense. After all, his feelings for Clarice had been real and profound - his first true love. Jean had been just a crush, however powerful. And he'd dated women since Clarice, if none with any seriousness. But Jean . . .

Inside his room's little private bath, he leaned a fist against the door and just breathed. "Get a grip," he muttered to himself. It would be beyond foolish for him to fall back into that hopeless pursuit. Jean was almost thirty and he was barely legal. She'd have no more interest in him now than she'd had three and a half years ago. The problem was - it wasn't a little crush any more. And if he were honest with himself, it hadn't been a little crush for some time. Perhaps his fey melancholia over the past year hadn't been due only to his breakup with Clarice, or his impending graduation, but to his lapsed contact with Jean.

"You are a complete and total _idiot_," he told himself, leaning back against the door and banging his skull lightly against the wood. Against all good sense, yes, indeed, he'd fallen for Jean Grey all over again, but not the angelic vision he'd considered her when he'd been eighteen. Her tragedy drew him, but so did her strength. She was everything he'd ever wanted. And too old for him.

Doffing his 'mission' clothing, he climbed into the shower, rinsing away sweat and frustrated lust, then got out to dress before heading downstairs. He wasn't, it seemed, the only one awake, though Jean wasn't yet there. He found Ororo at the stove in the kitchen, making food for Francesco. He eyed it skeptically, though it was only soup. "Is that going to be edible?"

"Up yours," she said pleasantly, finishing her task while he grabbed a box of microwavable pancakes out of the freezer and popped four in the toaster oven. Frank sat at the eat-in table, his eyes focused on the far wall. He spoke neither to Scott nor Ororo, and Scott was jolted back into reality and what had happened less than twenty-four hours ago.

When his pancakes were done, he took butter, syrup and pancakes to the table and sat by his friend. "Hey," he said. "How's the leg?"

"Broken," Frank replied with rare (for him) wit. He turned to focus those Italian-black eyes on Scott. "What happened at Fort Tryon should not have happened."

Scott thought about that. "You told me once that future**_s_** can be predicted, but never 'the future.'"

"True. But there are the more probable and the less probable."

Scott chewed on that along with a bite of his pancakes. "I screwed up, didn't I? When I shot him." Guilt struck like the impact of a brown Impala.

But Frank shook his head. "Not you only." It wasn't precisely polite, but when a Seeing took Frank, he forgot to be polite. "It should not have ended as it ended. He should have stopped when I did not move. He should have _stopped_."

"That's why you didn't obey my order to get out of the way?"

And the term 'order' surprised Scott. He hadn't been in charge; how could it have been an order? Yet Frank didn't object, said only, "Yes, exactly. You should not have shot him. Fighting him brought the guard. But then the next branching point was whether or not we let him escape. In the _probable_ futures, he did not hit me. He stopped. We stopped him."

Though Scott had known Frank for years, in many ways, he still didn't fully understand Frank's gift, and Frank spoke now as if he were a god, knowing what might have happened and what should have happened as well as what had happened. Their Italian Apollo.

Which thought brought him to a sudden and painful question. With a glance towards the door - Jean still hadn't arrived, but Ororo was finished with the soup and had brought it over - he asked, "How much did you _see_, Frank?"

Frank studied Scott a beat, then bent to blow on his soup and tried a sip. "I saw variations on the outcome of our trip to the park."

"That's all? You didn't . . . you didn't see the explosion?" As Frank was constantly reminding them all, he did not see everything.

But now, he didn't answer and Ororo's glance at Scott was sharp with reproof. Suddenly alarmed, Scott reached over to grab Frank's wrist. "Fuck it, Frank. _Tell_ me you didn't know about the explosion. Please tell me."

"I knew," Frank said.

And Scott released him to sit back, too shocked, too angry, and too . . . what? _Afraid. _Too afraid to reply immediately. "Why?" he asked when he got his voice back.

Frank didn't look at him but concentrated on his soup while Ororo continued to glare with that unique protectiveness she reserved only for Francesco. "There are crossroads," Frank began. "Pivotal events. This was one such." His voice was harsh. "So - did I save those I knew? Or did I prevent a war? Which would you have chosen?"

"Wasn't there a third option?"

Frank looked up. "No." It was unequivocal.

Scott looked down at his pancakes, then pushed the plate away. He was no longer hungry. Rising, he left the staff kitchen to wander.

He hadn't known Bruce Banner, and he'd certainly not held much affection for Ted Roberts. But they were dead. And Hank was blue. And Frank had known but hadn't stopped it.

He heard the tap-tap of feet behind him and turned, half expecting Jean. It was Ororo. She stopped a few feet away. "It is not your place to judge!" Her voice was harsher than he'd ever heard it. "This choice has nearly broken his heart!"

"I'm not judging." And he wasn't. Not like she meant. "But doesn't it make you wonder? He'd sacrifice us all, wouldn't he?"

"To prevent the death of thousands? _Yes! _Would you wish it to be otherwise? Do you think he could choose otherwise? This is what makes him Francesco." _This is what makes me love him. _She didn't say it, but the addendum was obvious. And from Ororo, queen of emotional independence, the depth of her attachment to this one man was striking.

"I . . . " He trailed off. She came nearer until they stood face to face. Jean might be older than him, but he doubted she'd ever confront him quite this way. It was what he admired about Ororo Munroe. When she believed something, she granted no quarter. They'd never have made a couple, even if she hadn't had Francesco. Yet sometimes he wondered. If matters had fallen out differently, might he have fallen in love with her? She was magnificent. But not for him. Now, he finished, "I don't think I'd want it to be otherwise, no. But that kind of power . . . doesn't it scare you?"

"In anyone else, yes. In Frank, no. Do you fear Professor Xavier's telepathy?"

"No." And he didn't.

She nodded once, decisively, then turned on her heel and went back to the kitchen. He watched the sway of her hair, unbound, rippling like their choices. Still not hungry, he went on to his own room and spent some time thinking as he packed to return to Berkeley. He sincerely hoped that neither Hank nor Jean ever learned the truth. It wouldn't be so philosophical to them. Scott was also fairly sure that there was more to it all than Frank was admitting.

Nor was he alone in his suspicions. Some hours later, when Ororo found herself finally outside with Frank, she asked him, "How will what happened the night before last prevent a war?" She could imagine only that it would make things more tense, not less.

It was dawn, and she was working in her garden while Francesco sat on a bench, smoking, his leg elevated beside him. "Without this team we're building," he said, "there will be a war between mutant and non-mutant. Yet if Scott doesn't return, there will be no team. Without the night before last, he wouldn't have returned."

"Couldn't one of the rest of us create it?" She didn't think of herself as a leader, but if it came to war or peace, she'd certainly try.

Frank watched her as she bent over the dahlias, thinning them. She might, indeed, lead them one day. She had the strength. But she was not the one to _build_ them; she was the one to nurture them, as much as it might surprise her to hear that. "We need Scott," he said.

"Why do you think this accident with Dr. Banner will make him return? No one that he knew has died, and the 'mission'" - her voice was sour - "was a spectacular failure."

"He will return," Frank said with the certainty of a pronouncement.

Ororo eyed him. "I hate it when you do that."

* * *

><p>The body of Bruce Banner was never found. Neither his mutated body that had fallen into the Hudson, nor the one the police thought they were looking for. His official status remained 'missing,' and he was wanted for questioning in connection with the explosion of his gravimagnetic field generator. If the initial feeling had been that he was the victim of an accident, as days passed without evidence of his whereabouts, the mood of the department, the university, and his colleagues shifted. If he bore no fault, then where was he? And if he were dead, why couldn't anyone produce a body? Dead men didn't walk away.<p>

As the only available survivor of the blast (officially), Jean bore the brunt of the investigative hurricane conducted by both the fire department's arson unit and OSH - Occupational Safety and Health. Though everyone in the building was interviewed, Jean was called in for questioning three times, and with each call, OSH grew more and more impatient and accusatory until Xavier sent a lawyer with her the third time. Matt Murdock had a gift for appearing unthreatening (aided no doubt by his obvious blindness), but he knew his business. Whenever questions turned hostile, he'd break in quietly to ask, "Excuse me - but is my client under suspicion of something here?"

And of course, she both was and wasn't. With at least one dead and millions in property damage, the pressure was on to find a cause. But the GFG had disintegrated in the blast, and it made arson's job that much more difficult. They had to determine whether the explosion had resulted from operator error, from a defect in the machine's construction, or was the result of deliberate sabotage.

Hank was interviewed exactly once, at the mansion. And the detectives went away without ever realizing that the man they'd just spoken to for almost an hour had been blue and furry. He hadn't had any additional information to give in relation to the accident, but like Jean, he'd insisted that Bruce Banner would have had no reason to sabotage his own project.

OSH wasn't entirely convinced, but as no evidence of tampering or sabotage was discovered by arson, the case was labeled an accident and officially closed by the end of July . . . just before Jean's residency began on the first of August. Hank had gone into seclusion after the accident, and was eventually sent overseas while a plan was hatched on how to handle his re-introduction into the academic world as an obvious mutant, without assassinating his career in the process.

Scott's own absence from class had been the easiest to rectify with a simple phone call from the professor. When he returned to California, he told the whole story to EJ, DeeDee, and Lee, who were equal parts amazed and appalled by what had occurred. "You mean there's a machine out there that could make you a mutant?" Diane asked.

"Only if you've got an inactive X-gene in the first place," Scott explained. "And if Bruce Banner's mutation is any example, maybe some x-genes should _stay_ inactive." He couldn't imagine what it would be like for someone of Banner's intellect to be reduced to the mind of a four-year-old. Then again, having the mind of a four-year-old would have spared him knowledge of what he'd lost.

Just now, though, Scott was concerned for Jean, who had to deal with the loss her academic father and also the hassles of an investigation during what should have been her long-overdue vacation before beginning residency. So he called her just to talk the very night he returned to Berkeley, and the night after that, and the night after that . . . and thus began a new pattern in the quilt of their history, a contact even closer than what they'd shared their first year.

EJ observed it with a surprise that really wasn't. Summers was like a comet where Jean Grey was concerned, circling back from apogee into perigee, the difference this time being that Scott evinced no need to explain away his interest, and no embarrassment for it, either.

But Scott did begin to experience a certain stress, a pulling between west coast and east. Talking to Jean regularly kept him apprized of events at the mansion in a way he really hadn't been since his first semester in California, and he felt reunited with his chosen family. But he wasn't _there_ with them. Instead, he lived a continent away, in a state of personal flux evoked by his impending graduation and his entry into grad school. Even Soapbox had gone into hibernation since Rick's departure. EJ, Scott and Lee still got together to play, but they hadn't yet had the heart to replace Rick. So Scott moved towards his graduation at summer's end like a man moving through fog. He could hear voices on either side, but wasn't sure in which direction he should walk.

Thus, he found himself lying on his bed one lazy afternoon in early August watching the wind tease his room curtains, and listening to Jean complain about the hours she kept now that her residency had started. He also heard the news of two additions to the mansion fold, both of whom had arrived within days of each other.

"First, the professor took Ro and Warren down to Norfolk, Virginia to pick up this boy, Rusty Collins, who burned down his own house. It appears" - her voice dripped with sour wryness - "that his father, who's a ship engineer at the naval base, decided to engage in that age-old tradition of getting his son a _prostitute_ for his coming of age."

"You're _kidding_?"

"Nope. Sixteenth birthday gets you a driver's license and a girl."

Scott almost rolled off the bed, laughing. What would he have done himself, if his own father had pulled such a stunt on him? Then again, Chris Summers had probably been well aware that Scott hadn't needed any introduction to sex. "So what happened?"

"He got a little _overexcited_ and his power manifested." Then her voice sobered. "I shouldn't make a joke of it. His gift seems to be pyrotechnics and he burned the poor girl along with his bedroom. She's got third-degree burns over sixty percent of her body. I really doubt she's going to make it, long-term. Burn recovery from that amount of damage is dicey."

"God, that's awful. How is _he_?"

"Traumatized, as you can imagine. But despite the age difference, he and Bobby've hit it off. Bobby's come a long way, and he was the one who spent an afternoon with Rusty, talking to him about bad manifestation experiences.

"Anyway, two days after Rusty got here, Frank got mugged by this kid. She's fifteen, been on the streets since she was twelve, and as skinny as a rail because she can barely _eat_. It seems that her mutation is an intermittent whole-body force-field. It's on more often than it's off, and when it's on, nothing can touch her - including food. She almost starved to death before she learned to turn it off at all. She's like a wild cat, won't even give us a name - calls herself 'Skids.'"

"And she's at the mansion?"

"Yeah. Mugging Frank apparently comes with an invitation to dinner." She was laughing, and Scott had to smile, too. It was just like Francesco to befriend his attacker. "He probably let her do it, come to think of it," Jean said. "Now, she's decided he's the best thing since sliced bread and follows him all over the house, and whoo-boy, Ro is _jealous_."

Scott grinned wider and moved the cell phone to his other ear. "Ro's a little proprietary about Frank." He paused, then added, "So the professor really is starting a school, then?"

"Looks that way. Ro's headed to college this year, but he's got three new students for fall now, counting Bobby."

In fact, the mansion would see _five_ new students that fall, but the additional two arrived by way of Jeremiah Haight. A week after Scott's conversation with Jean about Rusty and Skids, he received a call from EJ's father. "Eeej isn't here," he said when he answered the house phone.

"It's you I need to talk to. I got me a pair of kids down here who I was thinking your professor might be interested in meeting."

Scott's eyebrows went up at that. "Who are they? _Where_ are they? At your house?"

"One's sleeping in EJ's old room at the moment, name of Julio Rictor. His mom's from the neighborhood, but his dad's from Mexico. Kid makes the ground shake. Literally. Kind of ironic mutation for LA, but there you go. It seems his dad chased him out of the house with a shotgun, called him a devil, and JaLisa brought him home to me. He's in her grade at school - a junior."

JaLisa was a _junior_ already? Scott remembered her as a hyperactive fourteen-year-old.

"Who's the other?"

"A Chinese kid down at one of the malls who makes light shows for spare change. I ain't seen her myself, but JaLisa and Violet been down to check her out a few times, and talked to her a bit once. She always wears _yellow_, and calls herself Jubilee. Only a little thing, about thirteen."

Bobby's age then. "And they both want to go to New York?"

"Well, we kinda twisted Julio's arm. It's not like the poor kid has many options. He's a good boy, too, not like some around here. I'm going to bring him with me when we come up next week, so he can meet you." EJ had a party planned for Scott's graduation. As Berkeley held convocation ceremonies only once a year in the spring, anyone graduating at another time had to wait, or walk early. It hadn't bothered Scott as he was going on to grad school anyway. He'd just pick up his diploma from Sproul Hall later. As far as he was concerned, this wasn't the graduation that counted. He'd walk when he had three stripes on his sleeve and a fancy hood. EJ, however, felt the event needed more to mark it than "Good morning, congratulations, you want some coffee?" So he'd planned a party to celebrate.

Now, Scott said to Jeremiah, "That sounds like a plan, if it's not an emergency. Does he have his power under control? And what about the girl?"

"Julio seems okay, as long as he ain't upset. The power came when he saw his dad knock his mom around one time too many." Jeremiah's voice was hard. "We haven't had any tremors since he got here, though. As for the girl, well, she put off Violet, and didn't seem too interested in school talk. I'm going to go have a chat with her myself this weekend, but I doubt I'll have any more luck, so I was thinking that if Charles has time, he might come out to LA and meet her."

"I'll call him and let him know," Scott said.

"You do that. Or better, tell him to give me a buzz. I have a feeling there's more than two runaway mutant kids in LA; maybe we can set up something."

So Scott called the professor with the news, passing on Jeremiah's phone number and observation both. Then he returned to studying for his final exams.

* * *

><p>Sunlight winked off the gold-foil bear on the side of his blue coffee mug. Gold and blue - the colors of Berkeley - but neither a color he could actually see. They were locked yet in his memory, though even that was fading with time. How many years since he'd been able to distinguish anything but red and black? Four? What would happen when it was fourteen? Twenty-four? Would he still dream in color when he was forty-five instead of twenty-one? It seemed like a small question, trivial, but it haunted him. What was life without color?<p>

Hearing a car drive up outside, he set down the mug on the end table - a mug he'd bought on his very first trip to the bookstore in his very first semester here. EJ pushed aside muslin curtains, announcing, "Dad's here," and Scott glanced over at the pile of things - napkins, plasticware, paper plates and cups - to be taken below for the lawn party, this time thrown with the full knowledge of their landlady. She'd likely still peek out the window, but they'd lived here two years, and she knew 'her boys' wouldn't tear the place apart. "Let's do it, dude," EJ said, already out the door, and Scott pushed himself to his feet with a little sigh, following more slowly, his steps weighed down by a melancholy he found ironic as the guest of honor.

Outside, a light wind stirred the leaves so that they whispered against one another in dry voices, and mid-morning sun splintered through them to strike the earth in golden shards. Two cars had drawn up on the gravel drive, the van with Jeremiah and Violet, and a little Honda Civic with the younger Haight girls and a boy sporting cocoa skin, glossy curls, and a shy smile that earned him solicitous attention from JaLisa. Normally, five could have ridden in the van, but Jeremiah had to leave by mid-afternoon - he was preaching the next day - and the girls planned to stay. All had come early to help set up. Scott got hugs from the family, then was introduced to the young boy who caused earthquakes. Julio Rictor seemed soft-spoken and polite, and as melancholy in his own way as Scott. "You boys go upstairs and talk, and we'll take care of this," Violet told the two of them as she passed by, carrying a sheet cake in shades of red and black and what Scott supposed was white. Violet was thoughtful that way. There was a pick, shovel and brush on it, and a half-excavated pot.

"Did you do that?" Scott asked, surprised.

She laughed. "Not hardly. There's this woman in our church who works for the bakery department. I don't think there's anything she can't put on a cake."

She tilted it a faction so that he could see the top better. "Congratulations" had been scrawled amid the excavation tools, a miniature mortarboard dotting the "i," and his heart lifted. "Wow." Why he should be cheered by a cake's decoration he couldn't have explained. Perhaps it was simply that someone had gone to the trouble.

Scott took Julio upstairs to the apartment while the Haights set about preparing the yard. "They're some kinda people, aren't they?" Julio asked while Scott fetched them two Cokes.

"Yeah, they are."

"Not too many people in the world like Reverend Haight."

"No."

"He told me 'bout this Charles Xavier, say he takes in mutant kids and sends 'em to school."

"Yes."

"Why? He a minister, too?"

The six-hundred dollar question, 'why.' "No, he's not a minister." Scott pulled out a stool from the bar and sat down. Julio remained standing by the window. He was a tall boy, thin, and had his arms wrapped around his chest in a barrier. "I've met religious people who weren't kind, and people who weren't religious who had the souls of saints. I don't think it's a matter of religion. Charles is a Quaker - sorta - but he's also a professor. He likes teaching, and he's a mutant like us. He told me once that he can't help everyone in the world, but he can help some, so he does what he can. You have to focus in order to keep from being . . . I don't know . . . incapacitated by the enormity of it all - everything you can't fix. Does that make sense?"

Julio looked over at him with speculation in his eyes, and nodded. "Jeremiah say he's rich."

"Yeah, he is. Old money."

"So what's he want with somebody like me? I ain't got no money to pay for school."

"I didn't, either. He doesn't see the world that way."

Julio seemed skeptical. "Everybody see the world that way."

"Jeremiah doesn't."

That shut up Julio. Finally, he said, "So you think I oughta go out there?"

"I think it might be a good idea. But it's up to you. I think you should at least talk to the professor, then make up your mind."

"It helped you, being out there?"

"Yeah. A lot."

"How old were you, when you . . . manifested?" The terminology was clearly awkward yet on his tongue.

"Seventeen."

"Older'n me. Did it scare you?"

"It scared the shit out of me. I hurt seven people, one of them badly."

The seemed to surprise the other boy. "Wow. So, like, what d'you do?"

"My eyes emit 'optic blasts.' They're force beams. Essentially, I drill holes in things. I drilled a hole in the wall of my high school bathroom by accident, and some people got hit by flying chunks of concrete."

"Shit."

"Yeah, pretty much."

Julio fell silent and Scott sipped Coke, watching him watch the yard below. It was dim in the house, and warm and stuffy. They should have opened the windows. "Your parents toss you out, too, when you turned into a freak?" the younger boy asked finally.

His question made Scott wince. "We're not freaks, Julio. And no, they didn't kick me out for that."

"So what you need with some rich guy in New York?"

"I needed help learning how to manage what I could do." Scott tipped the can back and finished it off, then set it down on the counter. "Besides, you see any of my family hanging around today, or just EJ's?" The question tasted sharp and slightly vinegary, like sourdough.

But acid could be shared, and it relaxed the other boy. "Okay, s'cool. Sorry."

They talked a while longer about Xavier, the school, and living in New York while the family that had befriended them both set up a party down below. After a while, Scott could hear the sound of other cars arriving and the voices of people - Lee, Clarice and DeeDee, Scott's professor Fred Hand, who wasn't much older than his students, some other friends from school, and then an unexpected voice among them all.

"No way!" he said, surprised. "Hang on, Julio. Sorry!" He hurried over to the door, flinging it open to shout, "Rick!" Bounding down to the yard below, he slapped his old bandmate on the arm, rocking the smaller man. "What the fuck are you doing out here from Cincinnati, man?"

Rick Chabon grinned and pushed his glasses up his nose. "I had to come back to pick up some of my shit from the House, so when EJ said you were having a party, I figured I'd plan to do it this weekend."

"I'm glad." The words were brief, but fervent, and Scott glanced behind him, up at the apartment where the boy Julio stood yet at the window above. He waved the kid down. Having all of Soapbox together again, even for an afternoon, made his day. Now he understood why EJ had insisted that they pick up the band platform from Lee's. "You bring your ax?"

"What d'you think?" Rick fished in his pocket for a pick and held it up. "But I'll need to borrow an amplifier."

Scott slung an arm around Rick's shoulders. "Not a problem. I have _so_ missed playing." He grinned and added, "Thanks."

"Not a problem," Rick echoed. "Some things, you just do."

Rick's arrival wasn't the last surprise of the day. The grill had just been fired up and steak brought out - "It's a graduation party; we gotta do better than hamburgers," EJ had said - when a nice rental drove up, parking behind the line of vehicles on the drive. Scott glanced at it briefly but wasn't paying attention until Lee pointed with her can of 7-Up. "Hey, isn't that your friend with the wings? I still don't get how he hides those things. Who's the guy in the chair?"

Startled, Scott glanced around to find Warren manhandling the professor's chair through the gravel towards the back lawn, followed by Ororo and Frank. He was reminded of their first party here almost two years ago. Stunned, he said, "That's my professor," and went to greet his second set of long-distance guests. They'd paused on the sidewalk at the yard's edge and Scott bent to embrace Xavier. "You didn't have to come out here!" he said.

"Well, no, I didn't _have_ to." Xavier replied, releasing him. "But I wasn't aware a question of obligation was involved." It was spoken lightly, but with a touch of reproof. "Of course we came, Scott."

"We're proud of you," Warren said, hugging Scott in turn. His wings were still racked beneath his sport coat.

"You going to take that off?" Scott asked, tugging the coat lapel.

"Maybe." Uncertain, Warren glanced towards the house.

"It's okay," Scott said. "She knows about me." Warren still seemed dubious, but he let Scott and Frank help him out of the jacket and start unstrapping the rack.

Jeremiah had approached the small group to greet Xavier. "Charles!" he said. "Glad you could make it."

"You guys plotted this," Scott said while tugging at the leather straps on Warren's harness.

"Of course they did," Ororo told him, kissing his cheek. She held a big box in her hands. "This is from Jean. She could not come, you know."

"Yeah, I know. Residency." It disappointed him a little, but he had enough other unexpected company, he didn't mind too much. One rack strap undone, he set to unbuckling another.

"Open the box!" Frank said from Warren's other side, pushing Scott's hands away, and Scott did as urged. Inside the box lay a bush-style, oiled leather hat with a braided band, similar to the one he'd accidentally left on a plane the previous year. A note was attached to it. _Thought you might need a new one. You can roll this up and put it in a suitcase. It's 'squashable.' - Love, Jean. _

Grinning, he popped the hat on his head and Warren snorted. "Indiana Summers." The rack had finally come off and the wings slid free; Warren snapped them out to their full expanse, and to predictable gasps of appreciation.

"Exhibitionist," Scott teased; Warren flipped him off as he headed out into the yard.

Despite the number of people, the party remained quiet throughout the early afternoon. Xavier spoke at length with Julio Rictor, then coaxed Mrs. Gale out to sit with him in the shade of a lavender trumpet tree. Scott hated that tree. Every spring, it dropped fat, oily blooms on the lawn, but it made good shade in August. A short while later, Jeremiah and Violet joined them.

The band had just begun to mosey stageward so they could play once before Jeremiah and Violet had to head back to LA. EJ's parents had never heard Soapbox perform live, and Scott and Rick were wrestling amplifiers downstairs when a new car drove slowly past the house, went down the street and turned around to come back, parking at the curb. Scott was busy setting up, and didn't notice, but the four adults sitting under the tree did. A man and woman in late middle age got out and proceeded with cautious steps across the gravel towards the party in the side yard. The woman had been blonde once, and still was, but with artificial help. Her makeup drew attention to long cat-eyes and she wore a fashionable skirt slightly out of place at a cook-out. The man who followed had dark hair graying at the temples, a fleshy nose, and bushy mustache.

"Oh, my," Charles Xavier breathed out from beside Jeremiah, who glanced over curiously. "Were they a surprise, too?"

Puzzled, both the Haights glanced at the newcomers, then at each other. "I'm not even sure who 'they' are," Jeremiah confessed.

Xavier's eyebrows went up and then he smiled faintly, even as a voice from the lawn shouted, "Dad! Mom!" The order of their naming was, Charles thought, telling.

At that, Jeremiah sat back in his chair, knees splayed, big hands clasped over his abdomen as he watched Scott leap down from the low band platform to slip between people and meet his mother on the sidewalk bordering the lawn. They embraced briefly while the elder Summers watched with an expression set in neutral. When Scott released Katherine Summers, Chris offered a hand to his wayward son, and Scott rocked back slightly on his heels, as if receiving the impact of a heavy object. Then he took the outstretched offer. They didn't touch further than that, and their expressions were cautious, but not hostile.

"Well, well," Jeremiah rumbled, and Xavier could hear the man's thought as clearly as if he'd spoken aloud. _It's about damn time he showed up to something for Scott_. And while Xavier was inclined to agree, he knew that Scott wasn't blameless in the familial spat, and he also knew how much of a concession it was for Scott's father to set foot in the town of Berkeley. Xavier thought Scott recognized as much, too. The expression that Jeremiah had interpreted as caution, Xavier named surprise, at least on Scott's part. It might go some way towards mending fences between father and son.

But did Charles Xavier want them mended? He wasn't sure. He was old enough, and honest enough, to name what he felt as jealousy. He'd never been a demonstrative man, perhaps in reaction to the circumstances of his youth, or perhaps to the flood of others' emotions through his mind, but whatever the cause, he played his cards close to his chest. Nonetheless, a proud, blind boy had stirred his atrophied paternal instincts until he'd come to think of Scott as the son he'd never have.

But Scott wasn't a Xavier. He was a Summers, and his real father had appeared finally to renew that claim of blood - and Charles resented it. Jeremiah might be more straightforward in his disapproval, but it sprang from purer motives. A dark part of Xavier wanted the rift between Scott and Chris to continue so he would have no competition for Scott's filial devotion. That there would be a competition was his natural assumption from a childhood in which he'd been forced to contend for his mother's affection with her second husband, a cruel man who'd brought a child of his own into the marriage, and had wanted the estate for Cain. Charles had been Abel, and had suffered for it. If he'd escaped literal death, some days he wondered if the figurative death of a childless old age wasn't just as final? In any case, his mind turned naturally to internecine expectations.

Violet must have noticed something. She was no telepath, but Charles had learned long ago that body language could speak just as loudly to those gifted in reading it. Jeremiah had already risen to approach Scott and his parents, as had EJ, and even Mrs. Gale. In their absence, Violet leaned over. "You don't look none too happy to see them."

Xavier gave her a tight smile. "Not unhappy, merely surprised. If you didn't invite them, and I didn't invite them - and I sincerely doubt that Scott invited them - how did they know to come?"

_And why? _went unspoken.

Violet pondered that. A handsome woman even in her early fifties, she had the smooth, high forehead and wide cheekbones of her East African ancestors, though she'd gone stocky with age. Her face would never have been labeled 'delicate.' She was strong, in spirit and in features. When younger, she'd been a woman to turn heads, and her daughters - and son - had inherited her looks. Tempered now by years as a minister's wife, she reminded Xavier of the upper crust matrons of New York society, but with none of their restrictive affectations. Aloud, she said, "I know Scott still calls his mother pretty regular. He might not go home, but they talk, and this party wasn't a secret, even if a few on the guest list were. If it were my boy graduating, especially graduating _magna cum laude_, I'd be there. Wouldn't matter if we'd parted ways. Some things a parent just doesn't miss, no matter what. Well, not most parents."

Yet her words didn't ease Charles's mind, merely confirmed what he'd feared. When all was said and done, Scott's parents had returned to claim him.

And Violet seemed to follow that, though Charles was quite sure he hadn't projected. More evidence of her ability to read his face instead of his mind. "You know," she said, almost conversationally, "I got four kids - four. Each is different. Each is special. Asking me to choose . . . I couldn't do it. Most kids, they got two parents if they're lucky, and they love 'em both. Asking them to choose'd be cruel. But some kids - they got more than two. They don't want to choose, neither." Picked up her red plastic cup, she rose. "I need more tea."

More amused than offended, Charles found himself smiling. It had been more years than he cared to count since he'd been on the receiving end of a lecture. Turning his chair, he wheeled himself towards the small crowd at the edge of the lawn.

* * *

><p>The sudden evening song of crickets broke loud over the yard, interrupting conversation with its force. Words stumbled, then picked up again, and as the day slipped toward evening, the air had cooled slightly. The grill had been shut and moved aside; guests munched on left-overs and sat in lawn chairs.<p>

Scott and his father occupied the platform where the band had played earlier and would play again shortly. Mrs. Gale had retreated back inside, and Jeremiah and Violet Haight had departed not long ago. Scott was faintly relieved by that.

There were, Scott reflected, two types of ministers - the pastoral variety and the prophetic variety. Jeremiah belonged to the latter group. At one point shortly before he'd left, he'd drawn Christopher Summers off beyond the garage, hidden from the lawn and the gathering. And if neither Scott nor EJ (nor anyone else) had heard what had been said there, the expressions of both men when they'd emerged had been hard like granite, unyielding, and they hadn't spoken again, even when Jeremiah had left. Violet and Kate had made more of an effort to be civil, but it was strained, a veneer of feminine politeness skimming the top off curdled relations. EJ was inclined (naturally) to side with his parents, leaving Scott caught in the middle, so he'd retreated into the professor's shadow until the Haights had departed and EJ had gone upstairs, chased by Clarice who, bless her heart, had noticed Scott's discomfort. Freed at last, Scott had sat down beside his father on the band platform. Chris had been nursing a bottle of root beer; he never drank alcohol, not any more. They hadn't said anything, the silence not quite awkward, not quite companionable. Time had passed.

Now, Scott realized that they shared the exact same posture: half-bent forward, chins up, elbows on knees, hands loose between. He considered moving, then changed his mind.

It was honest, this echo of his father. He echoed Chris Summers in many ways, deep-down ways, but the surface of things always interfered. It was, after all, the surface of things that tended to collide, rubbing up against each other and causing friction. Sometimes he wondered how they could be too much alike to be so different. Pick any critical political issue and they'd be on opposite sides, often - and ironically - for the same basic set of reasons. They shared values, not opinions, and for that, he'd always had to respect his father, even when infuriated by him. Yet he wondered if Chris respected him, or merely found him a disappointment? He didn't know how to ask, and doubted his father knew how to say. Perhaps Chris's presence here, in Berkeley, said enough.

So father and son sat in identical postures and watched the yard without speaking, because healing didn't always require explanations, and presence mattered more than pomp and circumstance.


	16. Turn, and Turn, and Turn Again

**_October 10, 2000, 2:21pm PDT..._**

_**bonedigger:** Hello! Do you like my hat?_  
><em><strong>jeangrey:<strong> Yes, I like your hat. Of COURSE I like your hat!_  
><em><strong>bonedigger:<strong> No, no, no . . . you're supposed to say, "I do not like it. I do not like that hat."_  
><em><strong>jeangrey:<strong> WHAT are you talking about?_  
><em><strong>bonedigger:<strong> GO DOG GO. Didn't you read that book?_  
><em><strong>jeangrey:<strong> ?_  
><em><strong>bonedigger: <strong> GO, DOG, GO . . . as a kid._  
><em><strong>jeangrey:<strong> OH! A kid's book._  
><em><strong>bonedigger:<strong> well, duh!_  
><em><strong>jeangrey:<strong> LOL! And aren't you supposed to be in class?_  
><em><strong>bonedigger:<strong> nah - I'm hanging around the computer lab. Bored._  
><em><strong>jeangrey:<strong> Gee, thanks. I'm your cure for boredom?_  
><em><strong>bonedigger:<strong> yup_  
><em><strong>bonedigger:<strong> more seriously - how are you?_  
><em><strong>jeangrey:<strong> Fine, busy, as always_  
><em><strong>bonedigger:<strong> I don't mean in general. It was four months ago today._  
><em>. . . .<em>  
><em><strong>jeangrey:<strong> I know. I'll manage._  
><em><strong>bonedigger:<strong> call me, if you want just to talk. Whenever. Even 2am._  
><em><strong>jeangrey:<strong> :-) You're sweet._  
><em><strong>bonedigger:<strong> I worry about you_  
><em><strong>jeangrey:<strong> I'm fine. I'll manage._

* * *

><p>Sudden glare from the overhead light punctuated the little attic like an exclamation point, and Jean blinked involuntarily. No room for shadows here, no room for softness, for denials formed from the failure to find a body. Everything was cast in sharp relief . . . the untouched desk with its Sun station and papers strewn randomly around it, three walls of shelves packed with books and more books wedged in along the top - it was a room that had been left in mid-sentence, yet dust touched everything. The owner wasn't coming back to finish the conversation.<p>

_No body was ever recovered,_ part of her mind whispered.

_It's been four months,_ replied the other part, the rational part. Time to move on. Betty was trying. That's why Jean was here.

"I think he'd want you and Henry to have first choice. Take whatever you wish. I have lots of boxes." She pointed to a pile of cardboard flats in one corner. "If you can't take them with you today, you can just leave them in a corner with your name on top." Betty's voice was as expressionless as her face; she stood to one side, her back pressed up against a bookshelf like she might meld with it. "Don't be shy. I'm just going to box up whatever books his students don't want and sell them. I have no use for them. It's not even about the money."

Abruptly, her voice broke and she put the back of her hand up to her mouth, swallowed, then went on. "I'm tired of carrying these around. When we were students, every time we moved, there were more books than furniture. So I want these gone before we move again." That they were going to move again, Jean had heard secondhand, but she couldn't blame Betty for wanting to leave. The first step was the dismemberment of Bruce's library.

She felt like a cannibal.

"I'll put these to good use," she promised, avoiding 'thank you' or 'I really appreciate this,' as both sounded trite in the extreme, as if the cost of the opportunity were meaningless.

"I know you will," Betty replied, glancing down at the hardwood floor, then out the door, her hand back in front of her mouth. "Come down when you're ready." And she disappeared.

For a long time, Jean drifted from shelf to shelf, checking this title or that, or looking through heaps of journals. Some books she had; many she didn't. But she touched none of them. She wasn't ready yet to touch them. Instead, she sat down in the middle of the floor and cried. Finally, with the sun going down, she rose up again and began putting together boxes. As Betty had said, this was what Bruce would have wanted. He'd always hated waste.

By the time she was done, she had six boxes. Warren came to help her take them away. He carried them himself, though he could have called for hired help. But this wasn't a rite to be profaned by the touch of strangers, and Jean appreciated that Warren understood as much. Afterwards, he took her out for ice cream, and let her borrow his handkerchief when she wept again.

* * *

><p><strong><em>November 13, 2000, 6:37pm PST... <em>**

_**jeangrey:** So you're going?_  
><em><strong>bonedigger: <strong> kinda gotta_  
><em><strong>jeangrey:<strong> Nonsense_  
><em><strong>bonedigger: <strong> they came to my party_  
><em><strong>jeangrey:<strong> That doesn't put you under an obligation, Scott.__**  
>bonedigger: <strong> didn't say it did. But Dad came to BERKELEY, Jean. My father, the 'Nam vet. _  
><em><strong>jeangrey:<strong> And?_  
><em><strong>bonedigger: <strong> he did it for me_  
><em><strong>jeangrey:<strong> And?_  
><em><strong>bonedigger: <strong> you don't get it_  
><em><strong>jeangrey:<strong> No, sorry. I don't.  
><em>_**jeangrey:** It upsets me, the way he treated you. You're his *son*. But he didn't say a damn word to you for THREE YEARS?_  
><em><strong>jeangrey:<strong> And you owe him something? *Explain* that.__**  
>bonedigger: <strong> Yeah, it was 3 years. But I didn't talk to him, either. Besides, it's just 4 days. _  
><em><strong>bonedigger:<strong> I'm sitting here watching the Jim Lehrer NewsHour. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied the Bush request to stop the hand recounts in Florida. That's something. But I swear, this election has been SUCH a load of Grade-A shit. _  
><em><strong>jeangrey:<strong> And thus, he changes the subject . . . How many times have we been over the election, Scott? It's BORING.__**  
>bonedigger: <strong> who we send to Washington is a hell of a lot more important than where I'm going for Thanksgiving_  
><em><strong>bonedigger:<strong> I cannot BELIEVE we're about to put a SHRUB in the White House. A yucca plant, no less. yuc, yuc, yuc...__**  
>jeangrey: <strong> Very funny. _  
><em><strong>bonedigger:<strong> why, thank you_  
><em><strong>jeangrey:<strong> You don't have to go, y'know. To San Diego.__**  
>bonedigger: <strong>yes, I do - 4 days_  
><em><strong>jeangrey:<strong> You better call me.__**  
>bonedigger:<strong> I'm taking my laptop_

* * *

><p>1569 Maple Lane. Three and a half years before, Scott had walked out the front teal door certain that he'd never walk back in - the perfect assurance of seventeen that foretold the future with insular precision and a limited horizon. He wasn't so much older now but he'd added, "I just don't know," to his vocabulary. It was drizzling when he pulled his rental up behind the Cougar under the carport, and climbed out of the driver's seat to fetch his computer and a suitcase from the trunk. Then, head down and trying to shield his glasses, he approached the side door rather than the front. He'd slide back into family life from the borderland called clemency. It was a little after two in the afternoon. He'd gotten up before dawn to make the almost-eight-hour trip from Berkeley to Linda Vista, outside San Diego.<p>

His mother was in the kitchen when he entered, working on the meal. The place smelt of hot ham and sharp cranberries and onions for the stuffing. Fluorescent light glared overhead on black and white kitchen tiles, or black and pink to him now, but he remembered. How strange, he thought, to see this house in dual tones, as peculiar as it would be to see Westchester in color.

"Hey, Mom."

Kate Summers glanced around, then smiled - and it was real, not forced, not put on. She was happy to see him. Leaving the mixing bowl of whatever she'd been making, she crossed to give him a hug. "I'm glad you came."

He let her go. "Yeah, but is anyone else?"

Lips thin, she turned back to the array of bowls strung out along the kitchen counter, their contents in various states of food preparation,. "Don't start that, Michael."

Sighing, he flopped down in one of the kitchen chairs, setting his bags in another. "Where is everybody?"

"Your father's in the den. Alex is upstairs, I think."

"Is anyone else coming to dinner?" It looked as if she were preparing to feed a small army.

"No, I thought it'd be nice just to have just the four of us." She turned on the water and began rinsing potatoes.

_And,_ Scott added to himself, _with just the four of us, any volcanic explosions'll be self-contained. _

But the eruption he expected didn't materialize. With the election in vitriolic dispute, he'd assumed that politics would be the taboo topic of the holiday. It wasn't, yet what his father had to say left him open-mouthed with shock.

"It's money. Pure and simple," Chris Summers complained as he picked up a pipe from the rack beside his armchair and set about packing it. Kinnikinick. It smelled of red cedar and black tobacco, pungent, and sharp like Scott's sight now. When he lit it, smoke curled up to be caught in the light from the end table. It danced like visions. "Oil money buys a lot, in Washington, including the Republican nomination. You wait and see. The Bush baby'll go to the White House, but what this damn country _needs_ is a little _reform_. Not that Gore's much better, but at least he's got two brain cells to rub together - and he can keep it in his pants."

Sitting on the old corduroy sofa - chocolate brown that looked black to him now - Scott blinked, then blinked again. "Wait a minute. You voted for Gore?"

"No, I voted _against_ Bush. I'll be damned if I support that Catholic-hating, coattail-riding rich Texas boy."

Ah. Scott understood finally. "You wanted John McCain."

"Course I did. He's a vet. And he's got common sense."

Scott smiled to himself and returned his attention to the ball game on the TV. Last quarter, with the Patriots in purple versus the Detroit Lions. The Patriots were winning.

* * *

><p><strong><em>November, 23, 2000, 9:34pm PST... <em>**

_**bonedigger:** He voted for GORE_  
><em><strong>jeangrey:<strong> Who?_  
><em><strong>bonedigger:<strong> Dad - he voted for Gore. Can you believe it?_  
><em><strong>jeangrey:<strong> I thought you said your father was a dyed-in-the-wool elephant?_  
><em><strong>bonedigger:<strong> yeah, but he's CATHOLIC, and Bush did that campaign speech at Bob Jones University. Besides Dad likes McCain.__**  
>bonedigger:<strong> I found McCain campaign posters in the garage. Dad's never campaigned for anybody before, but he's retired now.  
><em>_**jeangrey:** Time on his hands.__**  
>bonedigger:<strong> no, not that . . . he couldn't_  
><em><strong>jeangrey: <strong>Couldn't what? Campaign?_  
><em><strong>bonedigger: <strong> yeah_  
><em><strong>jeangrey:<strong> Why?_  
><em><strong>bonedigger:<strong> military personnel can't be listed as a sponsor for a 'partisan political club' even in a private capacity. So vote, yeah; campaign, no.  
><em>_**bonedigger: ** still - I think hell just froze over_  
><em><strong>jeangrey:<strong> LOL!_  
><em><strong>jeangrey:<strong> So it went okay?_  
><em><strong>bonedigger:<strong> yeah, we didn't have a major blow-up. That's pretty damn good.  
><em>_**bonedigger:** now - when are you coming out to visit me? Huh, huh?_  
><em><strong>jeangrey:<strong> Would you let up with that?_  
><em><strong>bonedigger:<strong> no, I won't. You need a vacation. Beach. No snow. San Francisco trolleys. Hunky college boys . . .  
><em>_**jeangrey:** LOL! Trying to lure me?_  
><em><strong>bonedigger:<strong> whatever it takes, babe_  
><em><strong>jeangrey:<strong> You're awful. I'll think about it. Are you coming back for Christmas?_  
><em><strong>bonedigger:<strong> of course_

* * *

><p>"I can<em>not<em> _fucking_ believe this!" Scott had come slamming into the apartment, angrier than EJ had seen him in a good long while. "_God-fucking-damn!_" He threw his book bag halfway across the room onto the couch, which skidded back an inch or two under the force of impact.

EJ had been sitting at the kitchen table with three different books spread out around him. Now, he stood up. "Whoa - what gives, man?"

"They denied him tenure. Those good-for-nothing, arrogant, prissy sons of bitches! They denied him fucking tenure! He's on his sixth year!"

"Who?"

"Fred!"

EJ blinked. "That totally sucks eggs. What's he gonna do?"

"I have no idea." Scott slumped down in an armchair. "He's contracted through next year, if he wants to stay, but this place is a dead-end to him now."

Walking over, EJ moved the book bag and sat down on the sofa, hands clasped between his knees. "So what are _you_ gonna do?"

"I don't know." Scott had become interested in archaeology in the first place due to Fred Hand, and had applied to the anthropology department so he could work with him on Classical Mesoamerican technology. Without him there, Scott would become a graduate stepchild. "I suppose I could do ethnoarchaeology and settlement. But . . ." He trailed off and shrugged. "I want to do technology and Mesoamerica, dammit."

"I thought you were interested in the Mediterranean, too. Could you do technology there?"

"It's a different department, believe it or not, and I can't just jump from one to the other. Their application requirements are stricter. Anthro's so flexible because it's diverse. But AHMA wants an ancient language at the very least, and preferably an undergrad major in a related discipline - and I'm afraid math and _Italian_ just don't cut it."

Scott put his face in his hands for a moment - careful of the glasses - then looked up again. "I am so screwed, man. But I'm not half as screwed as Fred. _Why_ am I even thinking about going into academics? They're like a bunch of fucking sharks."

EJ didn't reply immediately as he had nothing useful to say, having no interest in an academic career in the first place. Despite his philosophical streak, he was a pragmatist who preferred the solidity of a cutting board and a sharp knife. He kept people healthy and well-fed - concrete results. And he thought the same was true of Scott. He doubted Summers would be happy in an academic career for the rest of his life, but didn't figure it his place to say so. "I know you don't believe in fate, and neither do I, really. But sometimes doors close because you're not meant to go through 'em. Or maybe you just need to try it from a different angle."

"Maybe I do." Sighing, Scott got up from the chair. "I'm going to call Jean, then finish working on that damn paper."

EJ watched his friend head to his bedroom, his telephone, and his lady back in New York. Shaking his head, he returned to his own study. Scott Summers talked to Jean Grey almost as often as EJ talked to DeeDee, but EJ and Diane resided in the same town.

* * *

><p>"Hey!"<p>

"Hey," Scott called back, dragging his suitcase across the tarmac to where Warren waited by his plane. "I see you brought the Jetstar this time."

Warren just grinned as he popped the cargo hold so Scott could store his luggage. "Flip you for the pilot seat," he said.

Scott pulled out a quarter from his pocket and flicked it into the air. "Call."

"Heads."

Catching the coin, Scott slapped it on the back of his wrist and lifted his hand.

Heads.

* * *

><p>"So."<p>

Nineteen-thousand feet, somewhere over a rolling prairie of western Iowa.

"So?"

"You don't still have a thing for Jean, do you?"

"Huh?"

"Jean. You call her a lot. I wondered if, you know, you still carried a torch, even after Clarice."

Scott frowned and turned his head away a little, glaring out at the patchwork quilt of winter-fallow fields pockmarked by silos and homesteads like stitched embroidery. Good fences made good neighbors. A wariness slipped down between them. "We're just friends, War."

Warren nodded. A beat-pause, then Scott asked, "Why?"

"There's a party for New Years, at the house." The Worthington estate on Long Island. Only Warren would call it 'the house.' "I thought I'd ask Jean. Residency doesn't leave her much social life. I wanted to get her out of the hospital, if she can get the night off."

Scott's frown deepened. "Yeah. It might be good for her to go to a party."

* * *

><p>There was no snow this year. The lawn stretched crackled and brown, but in the midst of the dead-dun of December, eight reindeer shone pure white and a ninth had a red nose. Scott laughed upon seeing them, and as soon as the car crawled up the drive, Jean was out the front door, waving, dressed in a bright red coat. He waved back and opened the door even as Warren took the car around the side drive towards the garage. Centrifugal force tumbled Scott out on gravel and grass, and Warren yelled, "You idiot!" The passenger door hung open as the car slowed to a crawl, and Scott rolled to his feet, running over to slam it shut. Then he trotted back across the lawn towards Jean, enveloping her in a bear hug. "Merry Christmas!"<p>

"Got tickets," she replied.

Baffled, he pulled back to look at her. "Tickets?"

"Plane tickets to Berkeley. I'm flying in on Saturday, February tenth, and flying back on Sunday, February eighteenth. That was the only time I could get off - it's between my Ob-Gyn and ER rotations. Is that okay?"

A merry Christmas indeed. He hugged her once more. "You bet." Then his arm around her shoulders and hers around his waist, they headed into the mansion. "I'll be in class, but we can work around that. You've never been to California, have you?"

"Nope."

"Man, this is going to be such fun . . . ."

* * *

><p><strong><em>January 4, 2001, 9:41am PST<em>**

_**jeangrey:** Why did you bug out on me?_  
><em><strong>bonedigger:<strong> ?_  
><em><strong>jeangrey:<strong> You could have come to Warren's party.  
><em>_**bonedigger:** he didn't invite me. And no, that's not being resentful. He needed a date for the evening. I'd have been a third wheel.  
><em>_**jeangrey:** No, you wouldn't!_  
><em><strong>bonedigger:<strong> yes, I would_  
><em><strong>jeangrey:<strong> It wasn't a date.__**  
>bonedigger:<strong> ? guy asks you out to a nice party, fancy dress - sounds like a date to me_  
><em><strong>jeangrey:<strong> Well, then, you taking me to see the Phantom way back when was a date. _  
><em><strong>bonedigger:<strong> nah_  
><em><strong>jeangrey:<strong> Why not? By your definitions, that was a date, too.__**  
>bonedigger:<strong> that was different_  
><em><strong>jeangrey:<strong> How?_  
><em><strong>bonedigger: <strong> it just was_  
><em><strong>jeangrey: <strong> How?_  
><em><strong>bonedigger:<strong> Don't be dense - it was an apology. I wrecked your car. Besides, I was just a kid. _  
><em><strong>jeangrey:<strong> And you're SO much older now. :):):)_  
><em><strong>bonedigger: <strong> I didn't say that. I know you're a lot older than me.  
><em>_**jeangrey:** I'm just *teasing*, Scott. And I'm only trying to make a point - it *wasn't* a date. _  
><em><strong>jeangrey:<strong> You - my friend - took me to Broadway. Warren - my friend - took me to a party at his house. No date._

* * *

><p>Jean's general medicine rotation through Ob-Gyn put her under the direction of chief resident, Barb Clark - the woman of the cats and baby and Stain Guard carpet. And younger husband. Barb spoke of Randy in passing sometimes, but it wasn't until the end of Jean's eight-week rotation that she finally mustered the courage to ask Barb about that relationship. "Did you know from the outset? How you felt about him?"<p>

"Hell, no. He was just a kid." They spoke over lunch in the cafeteria. Jean ate her salad and yogurt like a good girl who wanted to get into a bikini if it was warm enough in February. Barb ate a fish sandwich and fries. It was past the usual hour, and the tables around them had been vacated already. Bits of lettuce, and crumbs from bread littered white Formica tops; someone had left a glass with melted ice diluting the caramel color of tea or soda. "Randy was barely twenty when I met him."

"What changed?"

"Dunno. I just looked up one day and realized he was it. We had fun together. He kept me sane during med school. And we just . . . had this thing we shared."

"The cats."

"Yup. The cats." She eyed Jean, who picked at limp salad and played with a cherry tomato. "I don't suppose these questions have to do with that pretty blond boy who picked you up the other night?"

And Jean blushed, just a stain high on her cheekbones but enough to tell a story. "That's Warren. And . . . I don't know." She didn't, either. She'd been thinking about it ever since Scott's comments to her regarding the New Year's party. It hadn't been a date, had it, she wondered? Did she want it to be a date?

Barb was grinning. "Nice looking fella."

Well, that was certainly true, Jean thought. "Yes, he is."

"How much younger'n you is he?"

"Five years."

"Ah." It was the same difference between Barb and Randy. "Five years isn't that much, after a certain point," Barb said. "I don't really think about it any more. Randy's Randy." She shook her head. "It's the rest of the world that sees these labels and categories - white, black, yellow; Jew, Catholic, protestant; rich, poor; Yankee, Rebel; old . . . young. You can let those things get in the way - or not."

"But they do matter."

"They shape us, darlin'. They don't define us. Most people have a lot more to 'em than their age, or color, or religion, or bank account."

Jean nodded; Barb had leaned back in her chair to crunch ice as she studied the other woman. Her expression was thoughtful. After working under her for seven of eight scheduled weeks, Jean knew better than to mistake her casual posture and Southern-molasses charm for a lack of perception. Barb was chief resident for a reason. "Equality. It's all about equality, and I don't mean ERA. There are women - and men - who expect their spouses to take care of them like there were little kids, even if they're the exact same age. That's not a good relationship, and I don't care how many social _mores_ it meets. Marriage is all about _partnership_. I'm nobody's baby but my Daddy's, and nobody's Mama but Becky's.

"Randy's dad died when he was sixteen and he helped his mom run the house his last year of high school. And he was ready for it. He had good parents who raised him right; he got his childhood, but he grew up when he had to. He was a lot more mature than most boys his age, even when I first met him. At the time, I was going out with a guy two years older than me but a bigger baby than Randy ever was. When it finally dawned on me what an idiot I was being about things that didn't really matter, I dropped that a-hole for my white knight, and I've never looked back since."

Standing, Barb picked up her tray. "Come on, we should get back."

Jean followed, musing over what Barb had said. Warren _was_mature for his age. Like Randy, his home life had demanded it. What was five years? But later on the floor, when she had a spare minute and sat down in the break room for some coffee and to play on her laptop, it wasn't Warren Worthington she emailed.

* * *

><p><strong><em>February 9, 2001, 9:28pm PST<em>**

_**bonedigger: ** so what are you doing right now?_  
><em><strong>jeangrey:<strong> Packing. Well, I *was* packing until you blinged me.__**  
>bonedigger:<strong> PACKING? Isn't it a little LATE out there, your time?_  
><em><strong>jeangrey:<strong> Why, yes. But they don't let you off so you can go pack for vacation, Scott. This was my last day on Ob-Gyn. I had things to do.__**  
>bonedigger:<strong> tetchy, tetchy!_  
><em><strong>jeangrey:<strong> Sorry. :-{ Long day. Long tomorrow, too. Six hours on a plane, and that doesn't count flight changes.__**  
>bonedigger:<strong> Ah! But then you're out here and I'll take care of you for a week. _  
><em><strong>jeangrey:<strong> My own personal slave and masseuse?_  
><em><strong>bonedigger:<strong> something like that_  
><em><strong>jeangrey:<strong> I may hold you to that, Mr. Summers. The masseuse part anyway.__**  
>bonedigger: <strong> I got great hands, baby.  
><em>_**jeangrey: ** LOL! You are so bad. Or so cheesy. I'm not sure which.  
><em>_**bonedigger:** There's a difference?_  
><em><strong>jeangrey:<strong> Let me go pack in peace, lounge lizard. I'll see you in less than twenty-four hours anyway.  
><em>_**bonedigger:** grand sigh K_

* * *

><p>It'd been a while since Scott had been to the Oakland International Airport. These days, if he weren't flying somewhere himself, Warren took him, and he wondered idly why Jean hadn't just asked Warren to bring her. But if he'd asked her why, Jean couldn't have answered. She hadn't meant her decision to be clandestine, but she'd preferred to present Warren with a <em>fait accompli<em>, and when Warren finally did discover where she was going on vacation, he was both surprised and slightly jealous, even as he wondered at the sentiment. Hadn't Scott said he was no longer romantically interested in Jean, and Jean had never been romantically interested in Scott so far as Warren knew. They were just friends, the same as each was his friend - and perhaps that was why he felt jealous. Why, he asked himself, hadn't Jean invited him along on her vacation to see their mutual friend? Instead, she'd gone to California alone.

Scott had borrowed EJ's car to meet her at Gate 15, Terminal One. With only two terminals and twenty-seven gates, Oakland was middling-size, and Jean's plane, a United flight out of Chicago, ran twenty-five minutes late. Scott drank coffee and tried to read Crawford's _The Origins of Native Americans_, but the chapter on electrophoretic genetic markers made his eyes cross. Jean would probably love it, and he hoped he could quiz her about the material later. (And maybe, just possibly, he'd picked it to bring in order to impress her with his choice in 'light reading.')

When he'd read, _"Group-specific component, also known as the vitamin D-binding protein (DBP) is located on the long arm of chromosome 4 (4q12) . . ." _five times and still didn't understand it, he shut the book and stared off into space, his focus turned inward. Passers by assumed him blind. Finally her plane touched down and he rose to make his way to the gate doors, checking his appearance reflexively in a bit of shiny decor as he passed. Hair combed, chinos not too rumpled, no coffee stains. Little nervous tremors shook his hands as he popped a mint Life Savers in his mouth; his knees felt weak. He wondered if he were being ridiculous. But then the gate opened and the passengers began to exit, and he forgot about it.

She wasn't the first off, or even the twentieth and he bounced impatiently on the balls of his feet. Had something happened? Had he written down the wrong flight number? The wrong gate? But finally she came straggling down the ramp, trailing a suitcase stacked with a heavy jacket, her laptop and purse bumping her hip. She wore a flower-print skirt and low heels, and only Jean would dress up for a cross-country plane flight. "_Jean!_"

Startled, she looked around, then smiled to see him and threaded through the crowd in his direction. People parted, a few wore smiles as he enveloped her in a hug. "I was starting to wonder if I had the time wrong," he said, then added, "You cut your hair!" It barely brushed the back of her neck.

"It's easier to take care of. I'll be on-call next rotation in the ER."

He thought the shorter cut flattering. "Do you have any more luggage?" he asked.

"One suitcase I checked."

"Okay; baggage claim is this way." And they headed off, her hand resting inside his elbow.

"What are you reading?" she asked, grabbing the book in his hand and turning it to see the title. "Wow. 'Anthropological genetics,' huh?"

He shrugged nonchalantly. "Class, y'know."

"Ah." She smiled and squeezed his arm, just a little. He took it for approval.

When they got outside, headed for short-term parking, Jean paused, startled. "It's _warm_!"

"The high today was about sixty-two," Scott replied, grinning over his shoulder as he dragged both her suitcases. "Welcome to the Bay Area."

She hurried to catch up, pushing the sleeves of her pretty, loose-knit sweater above her elbows. He couldn't tell the exact color, but it was some shade of pastel and had a scalloped neckline that dipped lower than anything she usually wore, showing a hint of cleavage. He tore his eyes away and looked for the car.

They took the scenic route back, along the bay. The sun had gone down already but only just, and the sky remained light. Gulls shrieked and Jean had opened the window, sticking her head out to enjoy the wind. He laughed at her.

* * *

><p>"So what, exactly, is going on with the department, and your degree program?"<p>

"Hell if I know," Scott replied, handing Jean a cup of chai before retaking his place on the opposite end of the old velour couch. After a full shift at the hospital the day before, and a long flight that day, Jean hadn't felt like touring the town, and instead had dressed in a loose sweatshirt, leggings and leather moccasins, to lounge on Scott's couch. EJ wasn't around, rather conveniently having arranged to be out with Diane that evening. Why, Scott wasn't sure. "Don't you want to meet her?"

"I'll meet her tomorrow."

"You don't have to make yourself scarce." But EJ had simply shrugged and walked out the door, headed for Diane's.

If pushed, EJ would have been forced to admit that he had mixed feelings about Jean Grey, unsure what motivations lay behind her solo visit. From his perspective, she was just getting up Scott's hopes and that angered him. He wondered if Jean were really that stone-blind, or if she had some other, selfish reason for misusing Scott. The idiot would try to walk on water for her, and sink.

But it meant that for the evening, Scott and Jean had the garage apartment to themselves, and Jean wanted to hear about the difficulties he'd been facing in the anthropology department. Her own troubles with McMasters had made her concerned. Scott, however, felt reluctant to discuss it. When she asked, he shrugged and replied, "It's a little tense."

Tense like the muscles of his face, and Jean glared over the top of her chai mug. "It's not flying, Summers. You've been giving me the same line in chats for the past month - ever since the semester started. Now spill."

"Like I told you at Christmas, they sacked Fred, or at least denied him tenure, which is the same thing. That means I have limited options if I still want to work in Mesoamerica, and I do."

"And?"

"And what?"

"And so what are your options?"

Frustrated, he sighed. She wasn't going to let it go, but it seemed esoteric; too trivial to have become such a thorn in his side when compared to some of the other problems they'd faced lately. "It's a scholar's debate. There's these two documents, the _Popol Vuh_ and the _Annals of the Cakchiquels,_ that talk about migrations of people down from Teotihuacan. The new people supposedly became the ruling class in Tikal and other cities - but no mention of migrations appears on our monument inscriptions. So were the migrations a 'charter myth,' a story that justified the status quo? Or did they really happen? That's the debate. We have no _direct_ evidence for them, but we do have indirect evidence like foreign iconography in the artwork, and new technology and modes of dress that pop up, all of which looks suspiciously like Teotihuacan.

"Fred believes the migrations happened, at least in part, but King - the only other person in the department dealing in Mesoamerica - doesn't. Fred thinks there was more trade and intergroup contact in Mesoamerica than we've previously thought, while King follows a more isolationist approach. But he's no expert on Mayan epigraphy, doesn't read Nahuatl, and doesn't know shit about technology. I'd planned to do my thesis on possible changes in Mayan military methods resulting from Teotihuacan influences - but that's kinda hard if the only person left to _direct_ my thesis thinks it's a cock and bull story. Plus, who's going to teach me to read the language? Fred is the _only_ one in the department who can read Nahuatl fluently. A lot of Mesoamericanists only have Spanish, but how can you understand a people if you can't read their language?"

Scott was obviously passionate about the matter, and if Jean couldn't follow all the details - what was a 'Teotihuacan'? - the crux of it she understood all too well: an interdepartmental debate hamstringing students. "Could you pick another thesis?"

"Sure, but King isn't a Mayan expert. He does the ethnography of Spanish colonization, and interracial conflict in Mexico." Sighing, Scott picked lint off the couch blanket, then looked up. "I'm not sure I can work with him. He says stuff in class and I have to _bite_ my tongue. I'm doing a paper for him that I hate because it was the only thing I could think of that wasn't likely to rub him completely wrong. That's not a good recipe for getting my degree finished."

He hesitated, then blurted out what he hadn't yet vocalized even to EJ. "I'm kinda thinking about transferring."

Sipping her chai, Jean absorbed that fireshell quietly. "Where would you transfer to?"

"Somewhere I'm not going to have a methodological argument with the department chair."

"You didn't say he was the _department chair_."

"Yeah, well." He eyed her. "Now you know the real reason I think Fred didn't get tenure."

"Does Fred think that?"

"He's not saying."

"Of course he's not," she replied and looked down into her mug. The reflective opaque surface glittered back.

* * *

><p>California was a concert in adagio for Jean, who, accustomed to the brasher manners and faster pace of New York City, found the Bay Area both idiosyncratic and casual - but also <em>charming<em> in a completely different way from the boroughs. New York was the Old World transplanted to the New, but San Francisco embodied the thrill of the American promise - the west coast, the gold rush, the spirit of exploration, all overlooking a pacific sea instead of the tumult of the Atlantic. This was the road's end, whereas New York had been where it had started for European immigrants. And she'd made the trek in a little over six hours, total flight time.

On Sunday, Scott drove her south to see the beaches. "I brought my swimsuit," she said.

"You can't wear a swimsuit on the beach in February! Even in California."

So they'd played Frisbee in blue jeans and bare feet.

On Monday, Scott had class. Jean walked around the campus, exploring, and in the bookstore, bought herself a little bear with a blue and gold sweater sporting a "UC" on the front. She named it 'Sir Scott.' Later, EJ cooked supper for them all, and she got to meet Scott's friends - though she came away from the meal feeling as if she'd been put on trial and the jury was still out.

On Tuesday after his morning seminar, Scott took her into San Francisco itself. They rode clanging streetcars down steep inclines, explored Chinatown, and walked the balconies and archways of the red brick Cannery, eating a late lunch under olive trees over a hundred years old. She made him take her picture with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background. The sea wind blew her short hair into a riot of dyed red to rival the sunset, then they leaned together on the rail of an observation deck, elbows just touching, watching pelicans dive in the choppy waters. Suddenly, he said, "Look, look," and pointed in great excitement.

"What?"

"Sea otters!"

And she spotted them - a pair on the rocks, slipping into the water like children on a playground slide. "They're cute."

"You almost never see them in the Bay." He grinned. "Must be a sign."

"_Otters?_"

"Sure."

"A sign of _what_?" She shoved at him lightly. "That you're a clown?"

He laughed. "Maybe." They were silent then, watching the pair play.

"Do you ever wonder where you'll be in twenty years?" she asked.

"All the time," he replied, turning to lean back into the rail so he could watch her face. She smiled at him, dark eyes full of mischief, like an otter's. He could count the ticking of seconds by the hard beat of his heart. He was all-powerful; he was as weak as a kit; words jumbled up in his throat, never making it past the dam of his teeth. _I want to be with you in twenty years. _Could someone be killed by joy? His was big enough to break a mountain.

* * *

><p>The next day, Wednesday, was Valentines'. When scheduling her visit, it hadn't been Jean's intention to overlap her stay with that holiday, but she had to take vacations when opportunity presented itself and fate had played a joke. Before leaving, she'd pondered how to handle any potential awkwardness, given their personal history, and the gift she'd chosen had been generic, a CD by one of the bass players he idolized. In contrast, she'd spent an hour canvassing card shops, seeking just the right sentiment, yet everything had been either too trite, sagging with commonness like a washer woman, or too brash, like a girl who wore her lipstick too bright. She'd finally given up and bought a blank card sporting an antique photo of a young boy and a girl in a white Easter hat. The picture hadn't mattered much; she'd grabbed the first likely thing to make her own Valentine. Inside, she'd scribbled the words of Jane Kenyon...<p>

_We lie back to back. Curtains_  
><em>lift and fall,<em>  
><em>like the chest of someone sleeping. <em>  
><em>Wind moves the leaves of the box elder;<em>  
><em>they show their light undersides,<em>  
><em>turning all at once<em>  
><em>like a school of fish. <em>  
><em>Suddenly I understand that I am happy. <em>  
><em>For months this feeling<em>  
><em>has been coming closer, stopping<em>  
><em>for short visits, like a timid suitor.<em>

What she'd meant by that choice, even she wasn't entirely sure, but the image of lying back to back while watching curtains had struck her, reminding her of that evening after Bruce's death when she'd slept in Scott's bed and confessed her past in the secret of a blue twilight. For a moment, she'd been happy. Or at least, she hadn't been so devastated. And over the following weeks and months, Scott had been there, someone at her back. And that, she thought, was the essence of friendship, like rare ambergris.

"Thank you," she'd written beneath the poem, then had paused to ponder what else to say. 'Thank you' had become such a devalued phrase, like love between friends, stepchild to relationships either familial or romantic. And why? She did love him - strong and real and rich like loam, dark on the fingers and moist with spring. Passion was watercolor, brilliant and lovely, but it ran and faded, then washed away into the earth. Earth itself always remained.

But how did she say that? She didn't know, and so, in the end, she'd settled on only "Thank you," and signed her name.

As he had early classes on Wednesday, she doubted she'd see him before he left, so she woke in the night and slipped out of his bedroom where she was staying, tiptoeing over to where he was sprawled on the cushions of the couch. With only a faint light let in by the windows, the room had turned dim and treacherous; she had to move slowly. Wedging the card against the couch back under his shoulder, she felt her way back to his bedroom, and shut the door.

The next morning, he woke stiff from too many nights on lumpy cushions, and knocked the card on the floor before he realized what it was. Then he picked it up and opened it, confused until he saw the writing inside. He sat for a long time and read it over and over until he realized he'd be late if he didn't move. Slipping the card into his satchel, he made for the bathroom.

Nine times that day, he fetched out the card to read it through again, smiling like a fool. He made her happy, and at noon, he came home with roses, one for each year they'd been friends. He, no more than she, had known what to do about the coincidental collision of visit and holiday, so he'd done nothing, and now found himself in a busy florist shop along with seven other procrastinating gentlemen at lunchtime. "Five yellow roses?" the shop girl had asked. "Not a half-dozen?"

"Just five."

"Okay." Either overworked or numbed to peculiar requests, she'd fetched his five roses, he'd paid and then he'd hurried back to his apartment.

Dressed in a robe, her short hair mussed, Jean had been drinking coffee in the kitchen when he entered, flower-laden. Embarrassed to be caught so, she blushed, but to him, she looked unspeakably dear. He laid the flowers in front of her on the dinette and she lifted them to her nose, but commercial roses didn't have much fragrance, especially yellow ones - a bit too domesticated, perfect and inbred. It was the small wild rose that choked one with scent.

"Are you done for the day?" she asked, maybe a bit wistfully.

"No, another class at two, but I wanted to bring these." So they shared lunch, and he left. She found water for her roses and stroked their satin petals. Yellow, for friendship.

Or yellow for cowardice? And whose - his or hers? She went over to the couch and flung herself down, surrounded by the scent of him like that first night in his bed. He'd forgotten to wash the sheets and she'd been _glad_. They'd smelled heavy and male, not sanitized for guests and public consumption. She'd rolled in it, reveled in it - such a small thing, but visceral, and wild.

_You're a bad girl, Jean Grey,_ she thought.

He was eight and a half years her junior. Loving him as a friend was one thing - charming, even indulgent. _Desiring_ him was something else - staring at his full mouth and wondering how it tasted, if he were sweet, like a peach. Or imagining the smooth skin of his cheeks under the pads of her fingers, and how it might roughen where his beard began. Would he tremble, if she touched him? Would his heartbeat race in the jugular under her thumb? _Your pulse is slightly elevated, Mr. Summers. And what about yours, Dr. Grey? _

_You're a bad girl, Jean,_ she thought. _You want to bed a boy. _

_'It's the rest of the world that sees these labels and categories - white, black, yellow; Jew, Catholic, protestant; rich, poor; Yankee, Rebel; old . . . young. You can let those things get in the way - or not.' _Barb's words in the cafeteria a week or two back. Jean had been thinking about Warren. Or had she?

_Equality. It's all about equality, and I don't mean ERA_, Barb had said. Age didn't necessarily reflect maturity. In some things, Jean knew more than Scott, but in others, she was a babe in the woods. He'd had a normal life, and when it came to the social, he was more experienced. He didn't need her to make a man of him; he'd become one all on his own. They balanced each other like yin and yang, but what would the rest of the world say?

_Cradle-robber. _

Standing, she headed for the bathroom. They were going out tonight. It was a not-date date to a local bar, Wicked Jig's, where his band was playing. Soapbox had a new guitarist. "He's not Rick," Scott had said earlier. "But he's good enough. I guess we're spoiled." But even without the legendary Rick and his Lake Placid Blue Stratocaster, she was looking forward to hearing them, to hearing Scott, and she dressed carefully in black jeans and a skin-tight black tank with lace trim along the bottom edge, eyeliner that was too dark and red lipstick to match her hair. Tonight, she'd forget about being a double doctor, about being sanitized and domesticated and scentless. Tonight, she'd be a little wild. She giggled at the novelty. Thirty years old and she was prepared to squeal like a teenaged band groupie.

She was finishing up when Scott and his friends descended like locusts to load Lee's van. The little space that had been quiet and empty and golden with the light of late afternoon turned hectic with seven people, at least half of whom were talking at once at any given time. Jean stood off to the side, out of the way, and watched with bemusement. After a bit, the three boys (Scott, EJ, and the new guitar player whose name was Andy) went down below to haul PA equipment out of garage storage, leaving Jean in the apartment with the three women, two of whom she'd met at dinner the previous Monday - EJ's girl Diane, and EJ's sister Clarice. The third was Lee Forrester herself, the owner of the van in question. Jean was a little surprised that Lee hadn't followed her bandmates out, but before she could ask, Clarice had turned to face her, saying, "You do realize how he feels about you?"

And looking at the three of them - all looking at her - Jean understood that she was the antelope ambushed by lionesses. Turning away, she busied herself putting on her shoes. "If you mean Scott, yes, I know he had a crush on me once. And yes, I realize there's a little of that crush left, but we're only friends, Clarice. He knows that."

The other woman sat down on the arm of the couch and folded her hands together. She appeared uncomfortable, but determined. "Yes, he's your friend. But he's also in love with you, and it's not a little crush, or even the remnants of a little crush. I don't want to see you break his heart, but that's what you're going to do if you're not careful."

And Jean's Scottish temper, which she usually kept bound in the fine chains of social civility, burst free. "_You're_ lecturing _me_? I find that hypocritical in the extreme. You _did_ break his heart, Clarice, and I've never pretended to be anything more than his friend!"

"There was never any _pretense_ involved!" Clarice snapped before either of her shocked friends could come to her defense. "We loved each other. He broke my heart, too, y'know - but we got past it, and I don't want to see him turned inside out by someone who refuses to recognize how he feels because it might inconvenience her!"

_How dare you!_, Jean wanted to shout, but that was her anger talking. Clarice was adamant, and angry, but not vicious. She loved Scott still, Jean thought, but didn't want him back. She only wanted to be sure the woman who got him would care for him, and her cross-examination sprang from a rare generosity of spirit, not sour spitefulness. Understanding that cooled Jean's anger, though it still ran hot enough that she didn't stop to ask herself how she knew what Clarice's motivations might be in the first place. "I've never made any secret of the fact that I consider Scott to be a friend and only a friend," Jean said. "Or no - not 'only.' That degrades it. Scott's my _best_ friend. I love him, but it's not romantic and never was for me."

_Liar, liar, pants on fire, _a voice whispered in the back of her head.

_Shut up, conscience,_ she told it.

"He's your _best_ friend?" That came from Lee Forrester whose arms were still crossed, and whose mouth had turned down at the corners with disapproval. "Where the hell were you all last year, then? And the year before that? You come and go when you fucking well feel like it and expect him to wait on you. _We_ stick around; we're his friends. You don't treat him like a friend, you treat him like your _dog_."

"And you're a _bitch_," Jean snapped back, rounding on her. Lee was tall and solidly built, and pretty in a girl-next-door kind of way with freckles and curly hair. Looking into angry gray eyes, Jean had a second insight that evening - Jean intimidated Lee, who considered herself a second fiddle, and not a fine one, the nicked student model to Jean's Stradivarius. But her envy had nothing to do with Jean's intelligence or education. Lee envied Jean her _looks_, and that was an epiphany for the girl who'd always glowered at others for being pretty and desired. When had she become the homecoming queen?

"I'm sorry," Jean said to Lee, flushing. "That was uncalled for. But I don't know what you ladies expect me to do. Should I tell Scott to shove off because I don't _happen_ to return his romantic interest?" _Liar, liar, _whispered through her head again. "Since when did _friendship_ stop being good enough? He knows what's possible and what isn't. And why should I give him up just because he's still got a crush on me, as if I don't think he can handle it? That's patronizing to him. And it's not fair to me, either."

"So it's all about you?"

All three of them whipped heads around to the heretofore-silent Diane. She'd barely spoken at the meal on Monday, too, and Jean had gotten the impression that she was painfully shy - such a strange match for the vivacious EJ Haight. But her voice now neither wavered nor shrank.

"What do you mean by that?" Jean asked - or snapped, really.

"Just what I said. It's all about you - what's fair to _you_, what _you_ need, what _you_ want. Not what he needs, or what he might hope for - or how it feels from his side."

And that observation pierced her, held up a mirror to let her see herself, and she didn't care for the reflection. Maybe the three of them were patronizing Scott by coming to his defense behind his back, but at least that defense was about him; hers had been about her. Insulating, isolating. The fort of Jean Grey, and hadn't she pulled down the portcullis since she'd been ten years old? Never let anyone get close again, measure out her sentiment like a parsimonious fishwife keeping close watch on the till. She'd give a little, a coin here or there to keep someone interested, but hoarded the rest in the well of her heart. Afraid, afraid, _afraid_ of being bereft.

Her vaunted coolness hadn't grown from childhood madness. It had sprung from loss, and the wall around her soul that kept her safe also kept her facing inward. One had to go outside the wall to see the world as others did.

All these things crossed her mind in rapid flashes while the other three watched her. Then she burst into motion, grabbing her purse and dashing out the door, stamping down the exterior stairs even as the boys were about to climb up from below. "Are you ladies ready?" EJ called, grinning at her. And did he know? Had he been party to the ambush? Probably not. Men were more straightforward about such things - for good or ill.

"I'm ready," she replied and pushed past him towards his car parked on the other side of the van. Opening a back door, she stashed herself inside, hoping the three girls would take the other vehicle - which they, in fact, did. Scott rode up front with EJ, and Jean in the rear. The guitar player had his own transportation. In the car, Scott kept glancing around at her, smiling a little. Had he sensed her mood and was attempting to cheer her, or was he just happy to have her there? It made her think again about Diane's question. How _did_ he feel, really? Did he secretly think this might go somewhere? Or did he know it wouldn't, and was content with friendship? Would he be honest with her, if she asked?

_And what do you feel, Jean Grey? _ she asked herself. Could she be honest with herself? Did _she_ secretly think this might go somewhere, or was she content with friendship?

_Beautiful boy_, she thought, staring at his profile in the twilight. But the smoothness of left over adolescence had faded, chiseled down into the angles and lines of adulthood. Beautiful boy no more - beautiful _man_.

He turned back and caught her staring. She flushed and dropped her eyes, but he didn't. She could feel them even behind those glasses, curious. She looked up again and held his gaze until it passed from curious into uncomfortable. This time, he looked away first, not glancing back again until they'd arrived, then he seemed uncertain, embarrassed, hurried. Stumbling out of the car, he walked over to where the van had parked and helped unlock the back doors. She watched, her stomach squeezed and every muscle in her body weak. _This is love, _she thought with wonder. Thirty years old and she was in _love_ for the first time in her life, really, truly in love. Not just friendship and not only desire, but the whole of it - passion, adoration, affection, and painful tenderness. And it couldn't be.

Could it?

Getting out of EJ's car, she snatched her purse to check and see if she'd brought her phone. She had. Then passing by the unloading band members, she told Scott, "I need to go to the little girl's room. I need to make a phone call." He just nodded as he lifted a case free and she disappeared inside the package shop to head down to the bar below. Wicked Jigs. Jean had been in relatively few bars, and the atmosphere here - rough and brash with pool tables under Tiffany lamps and a busy dart-board - made her uncomfortable. People glanced her way as she entered, assessing the fresh meat, and she made a beeline for the women's rest room. It was early still, so there was no line; diuretic beer had yet to begin passing through systems. The emptiness inside gave her some privacy and she opened her phone, dialing back to New York. It would be late there but she badly needed to talk to one person. "Professor," she said when he answered. "I'm sorry to call you at this hour."

"It's all right, Jean." She could hear his body shift. Had he been lying down? Or reading in his chair by a cheerful fire in his suite's sitting room? "Is there a problem?"

"I don't know," she blurted, then hesitated. Admit it? Could she admit it? Wasn't that what she'd called to do? Admit the truth out loud finally?

_Just do it, do it, do it, do it. _

"I'm in love with Scott," she said, speaking rapid fire.

A pause on the other end. "Excuse me?"

"I'm in love with Scott," she said more slowly, her heart pounding. "I'm in love with him, professor. Completely, totally, insanely in love with him." And she giggled like an excited child.

Another pause, even longer, then a cautious question, "Jean - has something . . . happened?" And what had he meant by that, she wondered? But before she could ask, he went on, "Have you confessed this to Scott? Or has he said anything to you?"

"No, no," she said. "Not yet."

_And that was it, wasn't it? _she thought. Not _yet_.

"I want to. I should. I was thinking about telling him tonight."

And over two thousand miles away, in New York, Charles Xavier let out the breath he'd been holding, relieved that nothing had happened yet, alarmed that something might . . . but not surprised at all. This had been coming, inexorable, for months - like a great train wreck. He rubbed his forehead. How to explain, how to phrase this, how to turn her back gently from disaster when the fire of ardor was hot in the blood? But he knew, he _knew_ how terrible it was to fall in love with the wrong person, how it could savage the heart and the soul when - inevitably - it didn't work out.

"Jean, my dear," he said softly, "I want you to think about this very carefully. Scott is twenty-two years old - "

"I know," she interrupted. "I've thought about it. I've thought and thought and thought, but I love him."

"I know you do." He neither denied nor qualified her statement with 'you think you do.' He was certain she loved Scott, and that Scott loved her; he was also quite certain it was fundamentally unhealthy. Jean was Scott's dream girl - dream _woman_, rather - and that was the point. She _was_ a woman and a fantasy, and Xavier knew that at some subconscious level, Scott believed winning her would make him a man. He didn't see her as she was - fragile and uncertain and insecure, and in desperate need of acceptance. And Jean? Scott was what she'd never had in high school. The popular boy, attractive and urbane, who was utterly fixated on _her_.

As friends, they were splendid for each other. But as lovers . . . ? Scott would never feel wholly adequate, and Jean would always fear being usurped, because those deep down fears would be exacerbated by such a pairing, not alleviated by it. She was interested in him now only because she was socially immature herself. Had she been able to pursue a normal life, he'd strike her as exactly what he was - a boy on the edge of manhood. But emotionally, Jean was about twenty-two herself . . . even while in other ways, she certainly was not. And that could cause serious problems. Charles had to look no further than his own parents for an example of a match with a substantial age gap that had turned out disastrous.

He wished this might have come up safely in Westchester where he'd have had more leisure to deal with it instead of speaking across the miles on a cell phone. Yet he wasn't surprised that Jean's epiphany had happened there in a college town; it only reaffirmed what he already knew: Jean sought in Scott the normalcy she'd never had.

"Jean," he said, "I must be frank with you. A relationship with Scott would be _inappropriate_." Blunt, painful - but necessary like surgery. "While I have no doubt that the affection you and Scott both feel for one another is quite real, and quite intense, it springs from needs that _are not_ healthy." He could hear soft noises on the other end, and knew she was crying. It broke his heart, but he pressed on. "He's a boy, Jean. He needs to grow up, and with you, he'd never be able to do that. He would always be your _boy_friend. And you would always fear that his eyes would wander to younger women. Perhaps if you both were some years older . . . but you aren't."

The sound of her crying was louder, mostly because she was trying to hide it. "Jean, I'm glad that you are finding these emotions in yourself. You've been repressing intense feeling for years, and Scott's friendship has been excellent for you - but his _friendship_ only. I cannot, of course, make your choices for you. These are _your_ choices. But I'd be a terrible mentor if I told you that a romantic relationship with him was a good idea.

"I'm sorry," he ended.

"I know," she sobbed, then a nearly incomprehensible, "Thank you." And the connection closed before he could protest. Almost, he called her back, but suspected that she'd only hang up again. Sighing, and more deeply troubled than he cared to admit, Charles laid the ear-piece back in its cradle and frowned into the fireplace, watching the flames dance. In the long run, it would be better.

On the other end of the line, Jean leaned her head back against cold metal. Halfway through the brief conversation, she'd fled into a stall in case she were walked in on. Now, she let herself sob quietly. The professor was right. What she felt for Scott was wrong, inappropriate, unhealthy (_sick_). _You're a bad girl, Jean Grey,_ echoed in her head again. Then the inevitable happened. The door opened and in came two people, Clarice and Diane by their voices, discussing something mundane. Jean sucked in breath and tried to keep her crying quiet - unsuccessfully. The other two fell abruptly silent. Half a minute passed. Jean struggled to stay mute. Finally, Clarice said, "Jean? Is that you?"

And now what did she say? Her sorrow turned to frustration turned to anger. "Go away," she snarled.

A pause, then, "Jean, I'm sorry." It was the same thing the professor had said, but they weren't really sorry. None of them was sorry. "We didn't want to hurt you - but we didn't want Scott to be hurt, either. We felt like we had to say something."

Simmering anger boiled again into out-and-out fury and Jean fumbled with the stall-door lock, yanking it open to hiss. "Sorry? I don't think so. You just wanted to meddle in my business. You have no idea what I feel for Scott. No idea!" Grabbing her purse, Jean pushed past both of them and ran out the door, then glanced about almost wildly for the exit. The band was up on the stage, busy for the moment (for which she was grateful) and Clarice and Diane had just come out of the bathroom, faces concerned, Clarice's mouth open, ready to say something further.

Jean couldn't stand it. She fled back up the stairs, through the package shop and out into the early evening dark on Telegraph Avenue. Trying to wipe her face, she wandered aimlessly down the little streets south of campus. Between the heavy makeup she'd put on earlier, and the heavy crying in the bathroom a few minutes before, she knew she looked rather pathetic, black-eyed and wrung out. Her hair, never her best feature even on a good day, lay flat and limp. The wind of her own passing blew it back a little from her face. She ignored the others she passed on the sidewalk. They were mostly young - younger than her.

_You're a sick girl, Jean Grey. Sick, sick, sick. _It made a mantra in her head as she walked.

Passing a Starbuck's on the corner of Center and Oxford, she decided to go inside and get cleaned up in a bathroom where she wasn't likely to be barged in on by well-meaning busybodies who were Scott's friends, not hers. Inhabited mostly by college students, the restaurant was comfortingly generic, and she wove between people dressed in upscale winter grunge from Abercrombie and Fitch or The Gap, and one bright splash of commercial tie-die so very different from the handmade originals that might have been seen in Berkeley thirty years before.

Thirty years. She was thirty years old, not a college student, not Scott's contemporary, she was a woman and she looked ridiculous dressed in her little black-lace groupie outfit like a beldame caught in a midlife crisis. Stalking into the restroom, she stopped in front of a mirror.

She could see that she was indeed a mess and turning on the tap, she set her purse on the counter to wash her skin free of all makeup. Then grabbing brown paper towels, she scrubbed herself dry and stared at her face again. Her complexion was no longer taut and smooth, and the barest hint of permanent lines bracketed her mouth. Eyelashes that had once been thick and dark in defiance of eyeliner now needed artificial assistance. There were bags under her eyes and creases in her cheeks when she smiled, and her face had lost all that soft smoothness of a girl's. If the ravages weren't so terrible yet, she couldn't pass for twenty ever again, nor even for twenty-five. The strain of her schooling had put gray under the red dye, too. She wondered if Scott had a single gray hair on his head?

The counter was wet, and Jean used towels to wipe it clean, then pulled herself up to sit in her black designer jeans. Scott would surely have noticed by now that she was gone and he'd be worried - but what could she possibly say? She couldn't have stayed there a minute more. She wasn't even sure she could go back; the thought made her stomach queasy. At the base of it, Jean was an emotional coward. If her temper were ignited, then she could stand her ground to yell at Clarice, tell off the police who'd been interviewing her about Bruce, or - two years ago now - break up with Ted in a Fifth Avenue garage. But her choleric courage struck her at inopportune times when she'd been pushed to her limits. It was out of control, bright and sharp and red, like her hair. Except her real hair wasn't red. It was auburn, and so was her resolution. More often, she shrank from brutal honesty. It wasn't, as far as she was concerned, necessary very often, causing more problems than it solved. When did honesty become simply self-centered rudeness?

_If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. _

She'd heard that all her life, yet is wasn't entirely compassion or sensitivity that motivated her reticence. Deep down, Jean needed to be loved - or at least not to be hated. Disagreements made her stomach ill, as did disapproval. She would continue miserable in heart if it let her avoid an ugly confrontation. In that, and looked at with detachment, Jean had to admire feisty little Clarice. Despite her titanic height and her brontosaurus intellect, Jean was no natural crusader. Criticism curled her in on herself, reducing her to a child once again, scolded for unladylike behavior and crying in a corner of her bedroom. She was never enough. In herself, she was never enough, and perhaps that was why she drove herself so hard to prove to someone, somewhere that she deserved to be taken seriously. The Amazon wallflower from the mental ward could _do_ something with herself. She was _Dr. _Jean Grey, M.D., Ph.D. and no one was ever going to snicker at her behind hands again. Was it such a terrible thing to want, just once, to be happy and loved? But some taint in her always chose the impossible, or the _inappropriate_.

Grabbing her purse, she dug for her phone again and slammed it open, dialed another number, waiting for an answer. The phone rang several times before a voice said, "_Pronto?" _There was a terrible racket of music in the background and she guessed he must be clubbing with Ro.

"Frank!"

"_Bella Jeannie! Come va?_"

"Terrible, Frank."

A brief pause, then, "You wait a minute, okay? You're on your cell?"

"Yes."

"I'll call you back." And the phone disconnected.

She waited, turning the little silver phone nervously in her hands. She was still alone in a Starbuck's bathroom and the absurdity of that amused her. But a few minutes later, the phone rang again and she answered quickly. "Hello? Frank?"

"What is wrong?"

So she told him, and she wept again a little, and shook though the bathroom wasn't cold. He listened quietly like he always did. Scott was an active listener, nodding, slipping in a 'yeah' or 'mmm' or asking questions. Frank simply listened, the sound of his breathing the only evidence of his attention. When she'd finished, she ended it with, "I need to know, Frank. Would it be such an awful mistake if we got together? Is the professor right?"

His breath went out. "Jean - you _know_ . . ." He sighed. "I cannot tell you the future. There _is_ no 'future.' We make our own futures. People have _many_ reasons for doing the things they do. Some are good; some are not so good. It is rarely so simple as 'good' or 'bad.' _Sì, sì_, in some futures, you and Scott might become a couple and it would be a terrible thing. In others, it would not be so terrible but not happy. In others, you would live like a fairy tale, and in still others you never become a couple at all. Which of them is _the_ future? All of them."

There was a long pause. She didn't interrupt his thinking. "I do not need to tell you what you feel. You know what you feel. And I cannot tell you what to choose. It is your life. All I can tell you is that, whatever you choose, whether you are happy or sad will depend on why you make the choice. If you love Scott for himself, then you will be happy. If you love Scott for _yourself_, then you will be disappointed - and that would be true no matter who it was, no?"

She laughed a little and wiped her eyes. Here she was, being lectured about love and reality by a boy even younger than Scott, but as ageless as a god.

"The professor, he means well, you know? But to have a power like his, to see into the minds of people - it is dangerous. Easy to think you see everything. He knows he does not, just as I know I do not. Sometimes, though, you make choices in your arrogance . . . " His voice trailed off and Jean wondered what choices he was thinking of. "Things do not always turn out as you think. The professor - he does not want that you and Scott should hurt each other. But you and Scott will hurt each other anyway, whether or not you mean it. The more we love, the more we can wound.

"Jean," he said gently, "the only way that you can avoid to be hurt is not to feel at all, not to do, not to _live_. Love is risk, _bella_. Life is risk, you know? But sweeter for it. _La dolce vita." _

"Yeah," she whispered.

"Take your time. You are not the hare, no? There is no rush. The hare, he didn't win the race. Patience, _bella_. I will not tell you it will all work out - you would know I was lying. I will only tell you to follow your heart, not your fears, eh?"

She nodded, though he couldn't see it. "Okay. Thank you, Frank."

"_Prego_,_ s'immagini. _You go enjoy your evening."

"You enjoy yours."

"_Sempre. Ciao, bella." _And he hung up.

Sighing, Jean closed the phone and stared at her hands, and that's where her age showed most, wasn't it? Lined, with rough skin and blunt nails, they were working hands. But she minded less now. Age brought patience, and Frank was right. She wasn't the hare, and never had been. Cautious Jean, she trudged along, but she reached her goals. Hopping off the counter, she surveyed her bare face in the mirror. Maybe it wasn't so bad. Digging in her purse, she reapplied her make-up, but lighter, like she usually wore it, an accent, not a concealment. Finished finally, she left the restaurant, less crowded now than it had been even thirty minutes before, and then headed back to the bar. Scott was pacing around outside in the parking lot by the time she got there. He yelled her name when he saw her and ran up, a little breathless, questions tumbling over themselves getting out, "Where have you _been_? They said you ran out so I went after you and I've been up and down Telegraph ten times and - !"

She put two fingers over his lips to shut him up. "I'm sorry. I needed to think, that's all."

And though she couldn't see his eyes, she could sense his anxiety. "Think about what?"

"My business, nosey." She smiled at him and, rather to his surprise, pushed her way into his arms. They closed around her, hesitant. Her grip was stronger, but with affection only, and she laid her head on his shoulder. She wasn't the hare, she was the tortoise; and if it took a little while for them to get anywhere, well, that was okay. She let him go after a second, then clasped his hand to pull him towards the door. "Come on. If you have time before you have to perform, you want to teach me to play darts?"

* * *

><p><strong>Notes: <strong>The departmental politics portrayed here don't reflect actual divisions in the Berkeley Department of Anthropology. The Kenyon poem is "The Suitor."


	17. All the King's Horses

"You'll be sure to get sleep?"

"As much as I can."

"Don't let them overwork you."

"I don't have much say in the matter, Scott."

"Yeah, well, it makes me mad."

Reaching up with a smile, Jean cupped his cheek, then dropped her hand. "You're sweet." He blushed. Yet what they said mattered not a whit. What mattered was her fingers intertwined with his as they stood at the airport boarding gate, putting off the moment when she had to walk down the tunnel onto the plane, and it had never before been this hard to leave him. Pride kept Jean from making a fool of herself, and she wasn't prepared to admit anything in words, but they held hands and leaned shoulders against a wall with barely six inches separating their faces. There was a softness to his expression, a besotted fixation, and in that moment, she truly regretted his hidden eyes. Palpable electricity arced between them both and she swayed closer, her gaze fixing on his mouth. Elated and terrified, his fingers tightened around hers, but the voice of a flight attendant broke in with a final boarding call, and she wasn't ready to rush this. When she kissed him finally, she wanted him to know that he'd been kissed. A thorough job.

So she released his hand and stepped back, glancing around. She worried, too, about the casual interest of strangers; there were too many people watching. Such things mattered to her more than to him. She imagined that she read disapproval on faces, so she settled for a last hug, her cheek pressed to his, then grabbed her bags and hurried up the tunnel before the attendants could shut the gates.

The last person on the plane, she had to eel her way almost sideways through the cabin back to row eighteen. It was just her luck that there was no space in the overhead bin so she had to store her carry-on three bins up, and the couple occupying seats B and C were big enough that they really needed the whole row. They had to get out to let Jean in and she apologized profusely, then sat down and pulled out a book to read, embarrassed by the complications of her tardiness. At least she didn't have to wait long for the plane to leave the gate. She read right up until take-off, then closed the pages on her finger to stare out the window as the California landscape fell away below. Banking, the plane turned into the morning sun to head east, and Jean, bored of her book already, fished out a picture from those she'd had developed at a one-hour shop only the day before. It showed Scott at the beach, standing in a silly pose, his face plastered with a big grin. So often he was serious, but when he smiled, it was delightful, wide and easy and impudent. She pressed the picture up against the little, double-paned oval window so that the back lighting made stained glass of him, illumined for her heart.

"Is that your boyfriend, sweetie?"

Startled, Jean nearly dropped the photo and turned to look at the woman in the seat beside hers. The other had startlingly green eyes in a face beginning to show the lines of middle age, and her permed and dyed hair also had an hint of green to it, as if she'd gone swimming once too often in chlorine water. Most notably, though, she was huge (in both girth and height), and the doctor in Jean wanted to make a mental assessment of heart stress, but despite the weight she carried, she seemed healthy. Her breathing was quiet, and the flesh of her arms looked solid, not fatty. Jean suspected that if they were standing, she'd be facing a woman who towered over even _her_.

In any case, her seatmate had asked a question, and she wondered how she ought to answer? "Sort of," she said. "I mean, yes, he is, I think. Or I mean, I suppose he is." Then she sighed in frustration. That had sounded foolish even to her own ears.

The woman, though, was smiling. "Are you headed to Chicago to see him?"

"No." Jean couldn't keep the sadness out of her voice. "He lives out here, in Berkeley. He's a grad student in anthropology - studies Mayan warfare and technology." Then she blushed. That was far more than the other had asked, or likely wanted to know, but Jean found herself wanting to talk about him, as if she could cling to him just a little longer through the verbal.

The stranger didn't seem to mind. "Where _is_ home for you, sweetie?"

"New York."

"That's a lot of miles in between."

"Yeah."

"Can I see your picture?"

Jean handed it over and the woman raised the reading glasses that hung about her ample neck, perching them on her nose to study the photo. "Nice looking fella." She turned to peer over the top of the glasses at Jean, and the smile returned. "I take it you haven't been dating long?"

"I - No. No, we haven't." Unhappily, Jean hugged herself, and the stranger noticed even if Jean didn't.

"It's hard to be apart when it's all new. So, how did a New Yorker meet a California boy?"

"Oh, I've known him a while. We're old friends." Jean grinned a little mischievously. "He ran into my car."

That got a laugh from the other woman - "Sounds like a story I have to hear" - and so they settled in to chat for the three and a half hours to Chicago. Jean Grey heard all about Jennifer Walters' three daughters and five grandchildren, and her law practice in Los Angeles. And Jennifer heard all about Jean's residency and her relationship with Scott.

"Do you believe in fate?" Jean asked at one point.

"Fate?"

"Yeah. I know it sounds crazy, but sometimes I feel as if . . . this was all _fated_ somehow - Scott and I. How else can I explain it? But I have this friend who's always telling me there's no such thing as fate and the future isn't set in stone."

Jennifer studied Jean thoughtfully a minute before replying. Finally, she said. "I don't believe in fate, no. But I do believe in luck. Fate always sounds so _negative_. We're _fated_ to do this or that, as if it were the pronouncement of some cosmic judge. Luck is more optimistic, don't you think?"

And Jean tilted her head, turning that over in her mind, turning it over like a leaf. Luck, not fate. Scott wasn't her albatross; he was her dolphin. Or her silly sea otter.

* * *

><p>Jean had been told that someone would be there to pick her up at JFK when she returned, and someone was.<p>

Warren.

Seeing him standing there, dressed in a casual sports jacket and pressed slacks, she felt ambushed. Her stride faltered as he called, "Jeannie!" and came over to embrace her.

"Hi, War." She pinned on an expression of false cheer and let him take her arm to escort her out to collect her bags. Then he called for his car - chauffeured, of course - and this was so different from Scott picking her up in Oakland only a week before. When they stopped at a nice French restaurant on the way back to the mansion, Jean was surprised. "Why are we here?"

"Because I know you and you probably didn't eat anything on the plane. My treat. Consider it a 'welcome back and good luck in ER' dinner."

She didn't feel able to protest, though she wasn't comfortable. She knew Warren was interested in her, but she wasn't sure _how_ interested. Warren Worthington III was a consummate playboy, and if she didn't fear that he'd take advantage of her only to cast her off like an old toy, there was a frivolity to his flirting that disinclined her to take him too seriously. So she donned her polite face, smiling and making small talk, and cast wary glances at her watch. Finally, she said, "I do need to get back, War. I need a good night's sleep before tomorrow."

So he took her back to the mansion and kissed her hand as he left her on the front step; it made her blush. Ducking inside, she leaned up against the solid wood door and wondered what she was going to do about Warren? Confounded, she went quietly up to her room, opened her laptop, and checked her email. A letter was waiting for her.

_Subject: Home? _  
><em>From: .edu<em>  
><em>Date: 218/2001 2:21pm_  
><em>To: <em>

_Bling me when you get in, so I know you got there safe. -S2_

_. . . . _

_**jeangrey:** Hi. _  
><em><strong>bonedigger:<strong> Hi! I was starting to worry. I thought your plane was due in hours ago. Did you get delayed in Chicago? _  
><em><strong>jeangrey:<strong> No, Warren picked me up and took me to dinner on the way back. I hate plane food, you know.__**  
>bonedigger:<strong> Warren took you to dinner? _  
><em><strong>jeangrey:<strong> It was just a bite. Nothing big.__**  
>bonedigger:<strong> Oh. Was the flight okay? _  
><em><strong>jeangrey:<strong> Fine. Long. I have a long day tomorrow, too. :-(_  
><em><strong>bonedigger:<strong> I guess I should let you go to bed then. _  
><em><strong>jeangrey:<strong> You don't want to talk? _  
><em><strong>bonedigger:<strong> You should get some sleep. _  
><em><strong>jeangrey:<strong> You sure? _  
><em><strong>bonedigger:<strong> I'm sure. Don't let them work you too hard in ER.  
><em>_**jeangrey:** Okay, I won't. Night, then. _  
><em><strong>bonedigger:<strong> Night._

And signing off, Jean sat staring at the screen a while. How strange and _awkward_, she thought, and so very different from their chats up until her visit. Scott had seemed almost eager to get offline, whereas before, she'd sometimes spent fifteen minutes getting rid of him. And what did _that_mean, she wondered? Had he grown tired of her already, bored now that he had her wrapped around his finger? But wasn't that always the way of it with the popular boys? Distrustful on principle, she feared becoming just another notch in his bedpost, forgetting that even popular boys could have a heart and insecurities of their own.

Almost three thousand miles away, Scott Summers signed off his computer just as confused as Jean. Though to be fair, 'confused' had defined his emotional state for most of the week prior. Confused, ecstatic, terrified, cynical . . . turn and turn and turn again, so that by the time her visit had ended, he hadn't known if he were coming or going. She'd almost kissed him in the Oakland airport - he could have sworn she'd been about to kiss him - yet as soon as she'd gotten back to New York, she'd let Warren take her to dinner? Perhaps he _had_ misread things, exaggerating simple gestures of friendship into fantasies of suppressed longing. Certainly she'd never shown any romantic interest in him before.

When it came to Jean, all his usual self-assurance evaporated. Like many attractive men, Scott was a bit vain - a fault that his friends chose to overlook because his vanity was unconscious and honest. How _did_ one handle a face like his? Too much modesty was false, but he didn't dwell on it either, having found better ways to measure his self-worth. Nonetheless, it granted him an inadvertent arrogance that, combined with his natural charm, tended either to annoy women or to attract them. With Jean, however, that didn't apply. Her beauty, her intelligence, and her greater age leveled the playing field; she alone could make him feel common (and at some subconscious level, he liked that challenge).

Yet now, wretched, angry and ego-shaken, he slammed his laptop shut, then flung himself down on his bed. It still smelled of her - her shampoo, or perfume, or just the scent of her body - and he rolled himself up in the top sheet, drunk on her scent as she'd been drunk on his earlier that same week. But Scott's intoxication expressed itself in the painfully physical, and the intense pressure of arousal finally led him to reach down, undo his fly, pull out his cock and masturbate, keeping the sheet between his hand and penis just for variation, or maybe so he could better pretend it was her hand. Already tense, the slide of cool cotton over warm flesh drove him to a peak quickly and he was both too intent and too lazy to stop before making a sticky mess of things. Then he just lay there and breathed before rising to root through his laundry for a dirty sock to clean it up.

Much later, EJ returned to find Scott lying on his back on the living room floor in the dark. Flipping on an end-table lamp, he asked, "What's up with you, man?"

"My life is shit," Scott said, and turned his head away.

Sighing, EJ walked over and plopped down on the rug by his friend, offering Scott a hand. Scott clasped it and let EJ pull him to a sitting position. EJ had been expecting this conversation for months and knew, at the root of it, that it had little to do with Jean Grey. They just looked at one another for a while. After three and a half years, EJ had learned to find Scott's eyes behind the quartz, and appreciated how much it meant to his friend. He'd long ago stopped wondering what Scott's eyes actually looked like, and couldn't explain his lack of curiosity, as he knew that most of their friends speculated (usually behind Scott's back). He didn't. The glasses or goggles or visor were simply a part of Scott, and EJ had learned to read his mood in the tick of a cheek or a firming of the jaw, a twitch of mouth or hands, the eyebrows that rose or fell, even the tilt of his head. These were the windows to Scott's soul and EJ had no need to see his eyes. Right now, Scott sat slumped and loose with depression. "Spill," EJ ordered.

"I'm not sure I belong here anymore," Scott began. "This past week, it's been . . . I've remembered how to have fun. Having Jean around was like waking up. Since November, when the rumors started about Fred, it's been this . . . knot . . . in my stomach." He made a vague gesture towards his center; EJ listened but didn't interrupt. "And this semester, I've tried hard to figure out what to do, but I've been so angry about everything - kind of deep down. I didn't let myself think about it since I'm working with King - but Eeej, I _know_ he did this. I know it. It's his fault, what happened to Fred. I can't make myself like him, and he doesn't like me, either. I could deal with him for a few classes, maybe even on my committee. But directing it? I try not to think about that, either. But I've got to. Hiding my head in the sand isn't going to make this go away."

Scott leaned over until his forehead touched his knees, longish brown hair falling forward. "I don't think I can stay here."

EJ had known the day would come when they'd each go their own way but he'd hoped it might be for happier reasons - graduation, marriage. Yet it was upon them now. "Yeah," was all he said.

Scott raised his head and looked up. "You agree? You're not mad?"

"Why would I be mad, man? It's your life, and this is a crappy situation. Maybe you need to take three steps back out of the flying shit. It's only paranoia if they're _not_ out to get you, y'know. Sticking it out here just because you're fucking stubborn doesn't prove anything except that you're fucking stubborn, y'know?"

Scott grinned at that. "So what do I do now?"

"Look into other universities, dimwit. Call professors in your field and talk to 'em, see about transferring after this semester. How about this Mark Waters guy who's doing digs at Tikal? Weren't you considering going down there this summer, if he'd have you on his project?"

"Yeah, he's got NSF funding to excavate the city walls. John Farmer is out east, too. I love his work, but he's doing digs a little too far north of my interests. Still, he could direct my thesis." And they moved on to a discussion of potential alternative schools. Neither said anything about the fact that most were either in New York State or a day's drive away.

* * *

><p>"You did not have the authority to override my orders and release my patient!"<p>

Jean jumped and spun around. She'd been making notes on a chart when Jack Lippman stormed up to confront her. Lippman was a senior resident on the floor but acted as if he were the chief, and after a week in emergency medicine, she'd come to the conclusion that ER doctors were second only to surgeons in their arrogance. Now, tired from her first overnight with three trauma calls after eleven, she just stared at him. His face was shiny and red and he had protruding eyes under curly blond hair. "What are you talking about?" she asked.

"My patient. The indigent in Room C. Russell Curtis."

"That man was _your_ patient?" A surge of rage washed away all Jean's exhaustion and she slammed down the chart on the counter. "What the _hell_ did you think you were doing, calling in a psych consult to declare him incompetent? He was perfectly competent! Just because he's indigent and refuses treatment doesn't make him incompetent!"

"Well, your _competent_ patient was refusing an absolutely necessary triple bypass because his _horoscope_ told him it wasn't a good _day_ for it!" Lippman poked his finger at her, almost hitting her in the chest. "Let me inform you of a thing or two, Dr. Grey, since you're new here. Curtis comes in and out on a regular basis. He's been having chest pains for the past six months and suffered his second cardiac arrest this morning. Both have been mild, but the next one won't be. He's been putting off this procedure since we first told him he needed it, and if he'd had the operation three months ago, he wouldn't have made the last five trips to ER. And who pays for these visits? Our taxes. You just turned him out again, a man with no common sense or willingness to face reality. He's an alcoholic, he smokes, and his diet stinks. He needs that damn bypass or he'll be back in here - again - and we'll face exactly the same issue - again. So next time you blithely decide that a patient with a potentially fatal cardiac condition can check himself out against doctor's orders, why don't you try _asking_ the attending for his history? Or at least try reading his _goddamn chart_." He leaned in to add, "Be sure I'll tell Bram" - the chief resident - and then he stalked off.

Face flaming from fury as much as humiliation, Jean leaned against the nurses' station. "Bastard." The nurses behind her went on about their business with a click of pens and distracted voices, trying to pretend they hadn't overheard, but she was sure her dressing down would be all over the department within the hour. Turning back to the chart, she struggled to re-gather her thoughts and continue writing, then went to assess her next patient. An hour later, chief resident Walter Bram asked her to step into the staff niche.

His manner was less angry than Lippman's, but still brusque. "Do you want to explain yourself?"

"You can't have a patient declared incompetent just because he doesn't want to undergo a procedure. That's not _right_. It's a person's freedom we're talking about, to decide what's best for him." Her voice had risen a little, almost against her will.

Bram didn't appear to notice, merely shook his head. "Why don't you leave the diagnosis of competency to the psych department?" He eyed her. "You're a geneticist doing a general med rotation, Grey, not a psychiatrist."

"Neither is Lippman! He made a snap judgment! That's bad science - bad medicine!"

"That's ER medicine. Get used to it. And it wasn't a snap judgment. Lippman has been dealing with this guy for months. You haven't. Don't jump over the head of a senior resident again unless you have a better reason than that you _think_ he acted rashly. We have a process in this hospital. Nobody is getting admitted to Creedmore who doesn't need to be there. Let me tell you something. Lippman calls a psych consult at least once a month. They're used to him. They'll send someone over here, she'll smile, talk to his patient, then come out and tell him he's full of shit. I know you're new, and you don't know the routine, but that means you can't go making _snap judgments_ yourself. Got it?"

She stared at her feet and nodded, but felt compelled to add, "It's a decision about a man's sanity and his freedom of choice."

"We're doctors, not philosophers. It's our job to make people well."

"Even if they don't want to be? It's his right to choose."

Bram shook his head. "God, I'm glad you're just rotating through here," and he left her standing by the coffee machine.

Leaning up against the rear wall, arms folded, she glared out at people passing in the hall. None of them understood what it was like to be locked up with the key thrown away. Jack Lippman should spend a week on a psych ward before he decided patients needed to go there just because they were stubborn and foolish. "Insolent prick," she muttered, then returned to her duties.

Later that day after her shift was over, Jean described the incident to Warren, who said, "Wow. It sounds pretty bad." He'd come to pick her up at five o'clock - as he'd taken to doing lately when she wasn't on call. It both flattered and frustrated her. If she and Scott had been communicating less since her trip to California, Warren had begun pursuing her in greater earnest. Now, he was taking her out for ice cream in his silver Rolls and she felt ridiculously ostentatious stopping at a Dairy Queen in a car that cost more than the combined yearly incomes of all the shop's employees. Still, she had a thing for vanilla custard soft-serve, and Warren knew it.

That was the problem. Warren knew what she liked, and offered it without strings or claims that his indulgences were more than friendship, while Scott . . . fear and uncertainty made her suddenly skeptical of his intent. Handsome, popular, and confident Scott Summers with his personal harem of Valkyries - what did he want with an overworked, inexperienced, nose-in-her-microscope, science geek? In retrospect, it seemed silly. When he'd been impressionable and young, she could understand his crush. But he knew her better now; he'd begun to see the real Jean, and it didn't surprise her if he were back peddling.

Warren was different. He might be as handsome as Scott, and far more famous, but fame was a thorned rose, and his urbane attitude hid insecurities as deep and wide as her own. Jean understood Warren. He was like her, both in social class and in the disenchantments bred there. But unfortunately, he didn't make her belly shake, and it wasn't Warren she dreamed of at night. So she mediated her time with him, doing her best not to give him a wrong impression. Maybe with time she could learn to love him, or maybe not. But with Scott, the fire had always been there, banked beneath propriety. Scott _excited_ her. Warren didn't. It boiled down to something as simple as chemistry.

"The problem," she said now as she nibbled at her soft-serve, "is that I don't know if my call was right or wrong. The man _is_ going to have a massive coronary at some point. I should probably have called social services or the chaplain's office since it's their _job_ to assist patients in adjusting to illness, but I just saw that call for a psych competency consult and _freaked_. The guy was not incompetent. Superstitious and resisting how serious his condition is - yeah. But that's not _crazy_, War. You can't label someone _crazy_ for being afraid."

"I don't think that's what - "

"It _is_," she snapped. "If they declare him incompetent, that's what they're saying."

She could tell from Warren's expression that he didn't quite agree, but he didn't protest further.

Despite her exhaustion, Jean didn't fall asleep immediately that night. In fact, she was still tossing restlessly at one in the morning and finally got up, throwing on a robe to pad down to the kitchen for tea. No one was around. Sitting at the table, she waited for the teapot to whistle and rubbed at her aching temples. When the pot went off, she rose to pour boiling water into a mug, swirling the tea bag about and letting her eyes go out of focus as she watched. Finally, too wound up to stand it anymore, she walked over to the wall phone and picked up the receiver, tapping in a number she knew by heart. She hadn't talked to him, voice-to-voice, since she'd left Berkeley, and maybe that was the problem. Scott revealed as much by his tone as by his words, and she needed to hear him, not just read his remarks on a screen.

The phone rang four times and she wondered if anyone were there. It wasn't that late in California. Finally, EJ answered. "Is Scott around?" she asked. "It's Jean."

"Oh, yeah, hang on." Then a bellow away from the mouthpiece: "YO SLIM! PHONE!" Jean had to smile. She found EJ's nickname for Scott rather funny. Only a man with EJ's physique would call one with Scott's 'slim.'

_Who is it?_, Jean heard Scott say in the background. _Jean,_ EJ replied_. Jean? Yup. _Then, into the phone, Scott's voice: "Jean?"

"Hi. You have a minute?"

"You bet. Whatcha need?" And the utter sincerity of his tone undid her. It sounded like her Scott, and all the fears and suspicions of the past week evaporated. She leaned into the counter and sobbed a little. "Jean?" he asked. "What's happened? You okay?"

"Oh, yes." Smiling and still crying at once, she twisted a strand of short hair around her index finger, then told him everything that had happened that day, up to and including the ice cream with Warren.

"So you're dating Warren now?" he asked.

She sighed out in frustration. "_No. _I'm not. Would you let up with that?"

A pause. "Okay." Then, "You're really not?"

"I'm really not! God!"

He laughed. "Okay, okay. So tell me exactly what happened in ER again?"

And suddenly, everything was better, like the click and shift of a railroad router onto a new track. She told him about the incident a second time and when she was done, he asked, "How much of this has to do with that guy, and how much with you?"

"What?"

"You heard me."

Snorting softly, Jean stared at her cooling tea. "You think I made a mistake."

There was a long pause. "Yes and no. The guy wasn't incompetent, but - you want the truth?"

She pondered that, yet wasn't it why she'd called him? He'd _give_ her the truth. "Yes."

"I think you jumped the gun. You can't make people not be stupid - I mean, it _was_ the guy's choice - but you saw 'psych consult' and went ballistic. That's about you, not about him."

"If he dies before he has the bypass, it's my fault, isn't it?"

"No, it's his fault. He walked out the door. Still, you can't let what happened to you when you were a kid rule you, okay? Just because they misdiagnosed you doesn't mean they'll misdiagnose everyone. You were kinda a special case. It sounds like this guy might need serious help, even if he's not necessarily incompetent." Then Scott listened to her breathe, trying to control his own anxiety. He hadn't wanted to make her angry, but thought she needed to release the past.

Finally, she said, "Okay. You have a point. So what do I do now?"

"Nothing. It _was_ his choice. But next time, think first, okay?"

She laughed a little at that, and it cut the tension in his gut. "It's bad when you have to tell a _researcher_ to think first," she said.

"Hey, we all have our buttons."

"I guess."

"We do, Jean. Now - tell me more about ER. I wanna hear everything." So they talked for almost an hour and when she hung up, she was smiling despite the hour, and returned to bed with cold tea but a lighter heart.

* * *

><p>"So what do you think?"<p>

Barb took the proffered pair of pictures to study them, and Jean tried not to fidget too much. After a moment, Barb shot her a little grin. "This isn't the blond I saw you with."

"Ah . . . no."

The other woman's smile widened and she held up one of the pair: Scott in his new hat, sitting in a tree, looking entirely too full of himself. "Okay, spill. Who is he, how did you meet him, and are there any more like this where he came from that I can introduce to my little sister?"

Jean burst out laughing, relieved and flattered at once. Somehow, Barb always knew the right thing to say. Jean took back the pictures and gazed at them a moment before slipping them into one of her folders. "His name's Scott, we met when he ran into my car, and yes, he has a little brother, but I don't think they get along any too well."

"So what does he do?"

"He's a grad student working on Mayan technology and warfare."

"So why haven't I seen him around here?"

"Because he's in Berkeley, California."

Barb made a silent, _Ah_, and Jean was sure she'd put two and two together about Jean's recent vacation to the west coast. "He's cute. But you knew that." Eyes crinkling at the corners, she regarded Jean a moment while sipping a 7-Up. "So how old_ is_ he?"

"That'd be twenty-two." Then Jean almost winced as both Barb's eyebrows shot up, and she hunched her shoulders, leaning over the table. "You think he's too young, don't you?"

"Hey - women who live in glass houses can't throw stones, darlin'. It doesn't matter what I think. What do _you_ think?"

And Jean shoved a french fry in her mouth. "Some days I think no, some days I think yes."

"What do you think when you're not worried about what other people think?"

_Shrewd, shrewd_, Jean thought. "Mostly it doesn't cross my mind."

"Ah. And there's your answer, darlin'."

Jean nodded.

* * *

><p><strong><em>March 1, 2001, 3:22pm PDT<em>**

**bonedigger:** sung 'I'm makin' a list, and checking it twice ...'  
><strong>jeangrey:<strong> ? Have you had too much beer?  
><strong>bonedigger: <strong>not at 3:30 in the afternoon. Just feeling silly.**  
>bonedigger:<strong> been looking into schools out east  
><strong>jeangrey:<strong> And?  
><strong>bonedigger:<strong> couple of possibilities  
><strong>jeangrey:<strong> And?  
><strong>bonedigger:<strong> well, believe it or not, NYU and Albany - also Penn State, Ohio State, Boston U, Yale and Harvard.  
><strong>bonedigger:<strong> I doubt I could get into Harvard or Yale - Berkeley or no Berkeley - nor would I want to.  
><strong>bonedigger:<strong> But NYU? Along with Penn State, it'd be among my first choices.**  
>bonedigger:<strong> In some ways, PSU would be best, faculty-wise, but NYU is right there and they have a great grad program.  
><strong>jeangrey:<strong> Scott, you don't *have* to come back to New York.  
><strong>bonedigger:<strong> well, no - but maybe I want to come back.**  
>bonedigger:<strong> I kinda miss it.  
><strong>jeangrey:<strong> Really? What do you miss?  
><strong>bonedigger:<strong> oh, red hair.  
><strong>...<br>****jeangrey:** You're a flirt.  
><strong>bonedigger:<strong> Sometimes. Sometimes I'm serious, though.  
><strong>...<strong>**  
>jeangrey:<strong> I'm not sure how to answer that, Scott.**  
>bonedigger:<strong> You don't have to answer it. Just think about it.  
><strong>jeangrey:<strong> Shit. I have to go. Beeper's going off.**  
>bonedigger:<strong> Is it really, or are you running away?  
><strong>jeangrey:<strong> I'm not running away. It's going off. Later, Don Juan. We'll talk.**  
>** user jeangrey has disconnected **<strong>

* * *

><p>Jean came barreling into Trauma A just in time to hear "Roll call!" She had made it down in three minutes on the nose. "Here!" she answered to her name as she gloved and gowned, then she asked, "What've we got?"<p>

"Motor vehicle accident," the head nurse replied, voice brisk, reading from her clipboard. "Car rear-ended a semi, went right under it. They had to use the Jaws to get out the driver. ETA is about four minutes. Definite head and chest injuries - he hit the steering wheel - along with a probable concussion, abdominal injuries and multiple leg fractures. The EMTs tubed him on site but his blood pressure is bottoming." And the nurse rattled off his vitals.

"Shit," Jean muttered under her breath. If that patient survived to reach the ER they'd be doing well.

Four minutes could pass incredibly slowly, when one was waiting. Around her, the trauma team finished preps. It was Jean's luck to be teamed with Jack Lippman. He barely glanced at her as he listened to the EMTs on the radio, and she tried to regularize her breathing. She'd been here two weeks but this would be the worst she'd seen so far. She watched the others - they were primed, pumped, ready. She was just scared shitless. She wasn't cut out for ER.

But the ambulance had arrived; she could hear the slam of the outer ER doors, the calls of EMTs and nurses, and the drumming of feet on linoleum. Seconds later, the trauma doors burst open and there he was - a bloody, torn figure amid stained sheets. Middle-aged, unconscious, but still alive. "Primary assessment, people," Lippman called. "Get him bagged and vented! EKG and pulse-ox stat! Type him, too; we're going to need some blood here!" And whatever Jean might have thought of Lippman personally, she had to admit he didn't flinch. Jean went about her duties mechanically, weaving in and out of the trauma-room dance, and tried not to look at the man's shattered body as his clothing was cut away.

He wasn't going to make it.

How she knew that, she couldn't have said, but she knew. Oh, they'd fight; they'd battle till there wasn't any hope, because they were doctors, but he wasn't going to make it. Some things a body just couldn't recover from.

Flashes struck her like strobes, the white and black illumination of a life.

_Two kids in the den, a vivid impression of a stone fireplace and a cherry armoire entertainment center. Arguments over the controllers of a Play-Station. Two kids. Two girls. One had red hair. "Make her stop, Daddy!"_

_The heat of summer and the choking dust kicked up by a mower. Yellow iris along a fence and a yellow dog digging in the tomatoes. _

_A blonde woman reading a magazine and the same yellow dog sitting beside her on the couch. _

_The blonde woman with her head thrown back, caught in the moment of sexual ecstasy. _

_Girls asleep, red hair and fair on pillows, the hum of a fish tank in the background. _

"Jean! What the fuck are you doing? I said put in a central line, dammit!"

Startled, she jumped to obey.

_The rise of mountains, blue with fog, and the twisting roads of the Appalachian Trail. A hand on his knee, sliding up the inside of his thigh while he checked signs for the right exit, looking past white wedding flowers wrapped around the antenna.  
><em>

_Blinking lights on a Christmas tree.  
><em>

_Blinking fireflies in a June twilight. _

_Blinking lights on a highway . . . . Sliding lights . . . . too fast . . . . gripping the wheel. Impact. Pain.  
><em>

SLAP! "Wake up! Or get the hell out of my trauma room!"

"Okay, okay," Jean muttered, blinking, struggling to focus on her hands. She had an impression of nurses nearby in blue and green, like fog and mountains.

_What's her problem? She looks drunk. _

_She's freaking out, freezing up. _

_Move, you stupid cow. _

_It's dark here. It's quiet. I think I'll stay. _

"He's crashing!"

_Get her out of my ER. _

_Get her out of our ER. _

"Where's that blood, Hogan?"

_So quiet here. It doesn't hurt. Bye, bye, baby. Bye, bye, my babies.  
><em>

"I've got no blood pressure!"

_Get her out . . . _

_Get me out . . . _

_Out . . . . _

Someone screamed.

* * *

><p>Some part of her is hungry, a sharp pain below the diaphragm. She should find food. Lights whiz by. Horns. Voices. Sound lengthens, then it speeds up, accelerating to a whine like bees. She can see only one object at a time. A yellow fire hydrant. A concrete bench. An abandoned white cardboard cup. A young girl in a striped stocking cap. A blue U.S. mailbox on a street corner.<p>

_Is she drunk?  
><em>

_Get out of the way, white bitch.  
><em>

"Hey, you wan' sometin', Mamma?"

Rough hands shove at her. She stumbles, then she dances. Twirl and spin. Like headlights. Like a car out of control. Like death.

She laughs at them when they shy away. She's dead but they keep speaking to her.

* * *

><p>Where is her purse? She left it on the subway, she's sure. And a bag of groceries. Her pictures were in that purse, her last pictures. She follows the lights to some station. She's not sure which. <em>I have to find my purse,<em> she says.

_Tough luck, lady. _

_But it's got pictures of my boy. My last pictures of my boy. He died a month ago in Vietnam_.

_Vietnam ended twenty-five years ago, you freak. _

* * *

><p>There's a little dog and a pack of Camels and a brown leather jacket that she wears because it belonged to her brother. It still has the smell of the docks about it. <em>My name's Jill, what's yours?<br>_

_Julio. _

_You like dogs, Julio? You like my little bitch? _She wiggles her ass and laughs.

_I like you, baby. _

* * *

><p><em>The whine of an old air-conditioner kicking in before noon tells her the day will be hot. Kids scream obscenities at each other in the next room but she's too tired to care and the checkbook is reading negative numbers again. "Shut the hell up!" she screams finally, and her voice edges sharp with the lilt of Brooklyn. The kids shut up. For two minutes.<em>

* * *

><p><em>Daisies spread under her fingers, and fern and lilies. She binds their stems with sticky green tape and the bright smell of cut flowers is strong. The shop bell rings. "I'll be right with you!"<em>

* * *

><p><em>Honeysuckle blooms in April. She remembers the fat waxy scent, and the ugly shotgun houses lined up beyond the River. She remembers Bourbon Street and the sour smell of old men who hadn't bathed, the fetid stink of bad teeth when they kissed her, and the impatience of calloused fingers pinching her nipples. Now her breasts sag and she's old herself. Her pantyhose are wrinkled like the legs of elephants as she lumbers down sidewalks.<em>

* * *

><p><em>She shifts the weight in her arms and pulls up her shirt, undoes her bra. A hot mouth latches on and sucks hard. Pull, pull, until the let down of milk. It gushes. And she, sleepy with the sensation, relaxes back into her chair like the moment after climax. Her fingers stroke the fine hair at the base of her baby's scalp. <em>

* * *

><p><em>"Candi tastes sweet, Candi tastes sweet, such a treat, all the boys love to eat." But that's not the way it usually goes. On her knees, she's doing the eating, and it's salty-bitter. A radio in the background plays Red Hot Chili Peppers. She needs to tuck in her blouse in back, and her neck hurts. <em>

* * *

><p>It was a comment on the limits of Francesco's power that he wasn't the first to know of Jean's awakening. Charles Xavier was. He'd been the one to erect the walls in Jean's mind, and he knew it the moment they crumbled, battered apart by the ram of a luckless man's dying impressions. Death had woken her power the first time, and death had called it forth once more, rising like a phoenix. There would be no shutting it down again. The egg had hatched, Charles thought. Now, the race was on to find her.<p>

Yet he informed none of the other students at the mansion - eleven of them now, not counting Ororo and Frank. This, he had to do alone insofar as he could; Jean's pride would bear no pity.

But first he made an overseas phone call to Scotland. The physician couldn't heal herself, and there was no way to guess in what state he'd find her. Besides, he might need Henry's assistance in the weeks to come. Then he headed down to Cerebro. It was eight-fifteen in the evening when he entered, but it took him half an hour to pinpoint her location. Her fragmented mind led him on a merry chase, darting in and out of the bushes of others' psychic impressions, and he had to be so gentle, so gentle. A contest of wills with his phoenix would only result in mutual bruising. This hunt required stealth and skill. Finally he caught her in his net, holding her mind like a man might hold a baby rabbit, fearful she'd leap and slip her skin.

_Quiet, little one. Sleep. _

And in Washington Heights on the steps of the Hammer Building only a few blocks from New York-Presbyterian Hospital, Jean Grey sat down and stared blankly at the street. Initially, she'd meandered out of the immediate area of the medical center, but now had wandered back, led to this one building by cosmic irony or years of habit. People stepped around her; a few had seen her there before, including the security guard, and so left her undisturbed. A dazed resident in scrubs after a bad day wasn't so uncommon a sight, but there was something a bit mad in the face of this one, and her hands were still unwashed, stained red past the wrists. Pedestrians kept their distance and their eyes rolled white like spooked horses - even those who might otherwise have tried to get away with something. The insane were never predictable.

It took Xavier an hour and ten minutes to reach the area, then he left his driver and car in the hospital parking lot to continue on by himself. Here among the tall medical buildings, people were jumbled into a macédoine salad of skin, dress, and social class, and no one glanced twice at the man in a wheelchair as he moved purposely up the block towards the bright spot of fire in his mind. At last, he spotted her. Curled up in nearly a fetal position on the landing, she seemed far too small for the psychic glow she cast. Stopping at the base of the stairs, he sent, _It's time to go, my dear._

* * *

><p>She'd seen Jesus and he was bald. Giggling, she called out, "Where's your cross?" then unfolded herself to spread her arms wide like a crucifix. The knuckles of one hand hit a corner of brick and it hurt. Yanking it back, she sucked at it, got a mouthful of salty iron. This is my blood that was shed for you.<p>

_It's time to go,_ he told her, and beckoned, and the taste of his mind was strong - intoxicating like aged, oak-cask cabernet, full of smoke and plum and pepper. Was he Jesus or Dionysos, god of her madness? Headlights slid by behind him. They beckoned, too, like the white lights of death. But she'd seen death and it was dark. _Goodbye, my babies. Goodbye, my Annie. Goodbye, goodbye.  
><em>

"Are we going to heaven?"

"We're going home, Jean."

But Jean wasn't her name. He couldn't be there, calling her home by a name that wasn't hers, she thought. Yet what _was_ her name? Jill? Juanita? Candi? Maria? Jean? Autumn? Semele?

Semele. She was Semele with a veil as broad as the heavens because her womb had held a god. "I'm Semele," she told him, then waited for the strike of the thunderbolt that would immolate her.

But he said only, "Let's go home, Semele."

Rising, unsteady on her feet, she tripped down five concrete steps to take the hand he stretched out to her, and in so doing, a little of her confusion sloughed off like old skin. "Let's go home," he said again.

She nodded.

* * *

><p>Over the next several days, Charles made arrangements. It was what he excelled at - making arrangements, covering tracks, explaining the peculiar. A few phone calls, a little finessing, a gentle reminder of the Family Medical Leave Act, and Jean wasn't immediately booted from her residency program. Ororo was sent to the hospital to collect Jean's overnight bag and personal effects, while back at the mansion, temporary quarters were set up for her in the danger room. Xavier might have preferred to put her in the better-shielded Cerebro, but he was concerned for her sanity and didn't trust her alone in a big room with a narrow tongue of flooring stretching out into a large space of nothing. So she was housed in the danger room, which at least had moderate telepathic shields.<p>

Hank had arrived from Scotland, still blue, still angry, still depressed, but coming to terms with the permanence of his condition. He ran extensive tests on Jean and tried not to weep for the cracked state of her mind.

"There have been definite alterations to her DNA," he reported later to the professor. "Just as there have been to mine, and just like - I'm sure if we had a sample - to Bruce Banner's."

"So you're saying that Dr. Banner's machine mutated all three of you."

"Correct."

Xavier pondered that. "You've argued that Bruce was a latent mutant, and that your mutation never completed itself at puberty, but how do you explain Jean, Henry?"

Sighing, Hank removed his glasses and plopped down in the reinforced chair at his old desk in the sub-basement labs. He weighed close to three hundred pounds now, a bit more than most office furniture was designed to support. "I don't know," he answered. "I can't explain it. The machine wasn't supposed to affect either normal humans or fully manifested mutants, but I'm not sure Bruce got as far as testing it on full-mutant DNA. All the test results that I saw had been from experiments run on non-X controls and unexpressed X-gene samples. The best I can tell you is that it didn't affect the DNA of anyone _without_ an X-gene."

"Why weren't DNA tests run on Jean last summer?" Xavier snapped, growing angry.

"I thought they were! At the time, I was a little distracted, Charles."

And Xavier backed down, nodding.

"I assumed," Hand said, "that Jean would automatically run them on herself, but if she did, there's no record of it. Maybe she thought that with no obvious changes, it hadn't affected her."

"Or maybe she didn't want to know if it had."

"That, too." Leaning forward, Hank picked up a stack of printouts from his overburdened desk and passed them to the professor. "Right now, that's all I've got." He paused, then asked, "Have you told Scott yet?"

"No."

"When are you going to tell him?"

"I'm unsure. There is nothing he can do - "

"He has a right to know. It's been four days. You know he'll be furious if you wait much longer."

Charles did know that. In fact, Scott would be furious that Xavier had waited as long as he had, but some premonition warned him that informing the boy would lead to a chain reaction Xavier might be loathe to face. Working with Jean - _reassembling_ Jean from the fragmented personalities in her head - was taking all his focus. He had no wish to compound the situation by adding an anxious twenty-two-year-old to the mix.

"Perhaps you should call him, Henry."

But Hank McCoy just tilted his head down and raised both brows. "It needs to come from you. I'm surprised he hasn't called out here already."

* * *

><p>In fact, there was a simple reason why Scott Summers hadn't called yet. Doubt.<p>

He'd tipped his hand in his final chat with Jean, and she'd fled. He still wasn't convinced that her emergency had been real instead of a manufactured convenience, and the more time that passed with no word from New York, the more anxious he grew, certain he'd made a fatal error. His concentration failed in the midst of midterms and his mood skidded from distracted right into depressed.

"Man, just _call_," EJ advised, tossing Scott's cell phone into Scott's lap where he sat on the couch. Scott stared at the phone, then picked it up and dialed, but all he received was a message that Jean's cell was off.

Early the next morning their apartment phone rang. EJ had already gone to class and Scott dragged himself out of bed to answer. "'Lo?"

"Scott? This is Professor Xavier."

And that woke him up. Why would the professor be calling him at this hour of the morning? Swinging his legs over the side of his bed and feeling for his glasses instead of his goggles, he replied, "Yes, sir?"

It came out slightly slurred, and Xavier asked, "Did I catch you at a bad time?"

"What? No, no. I just got up, that's all. Sorry. What's happened?" The anxiety was back in his belly and he ran a nervous hand through his greasy hair.

"There's been a certain development. But let me preface this by saying that, at the moment, there is nothing you can do about it. I'm simply informing you so that you're aware of the situation."

The hair on Scott's arms and the back of his neck rose straight up. "What's happened?" he asked again.

"Jean's telepathy has remanifested."

And that wasn't at all what Scott had feared or steeled himself for. "What does that mean?"

"The blocks I had placed in her mind some years ago have broken at last, and her telepathy is back. She's here at the mansion - perfectly fine physically, but a bit disoriented, as you can imagine. Henry is here, too, and we're both working with her."

"Can I talk to her?"

"She's not in a condition to talk on the phone, Scott."

And the pinpricks of fear returned. "Maybe I should come out there?"

"I see no reason for it. Don't you have a week's worth of class left before spring break, and other plans made for your vacation?"

"Yeah, sure, but I could change them, it wouldn't -"

"Scott. There is nothing that you can do here, even if you came."

"I could keep her company, talk to her -"

"No, you could not. Jean has been isolated in the danger room. It's necessary until she can learn proper shielding. At this point, she is unable to filter out the thoughts of any unshielded mind."

"I should _be_ there!" Scott protested, "at least for when she gets out of isolation."

"Be here for how many _months_, son? No one can guess how long it will take her to build up her own mental shields. And repeating myself once again, there is nothing that you - a _non-telepath_ - can contribute."

In short, he'd just be in the way. "_Then why call me?" _But it was more distraught than scolding.

"I thought that you would want to know. Jean will be all right, but it will take time. You simply must be patient."

Rage and fear replaced initial shock, and in a pique, he slammed the phone down, cutting off the professor. Then he bolted out of bed, showered and dressed . . . and stopped dead. What did he think he was doing? Reason had returned, and he knew that the professor was right, as far as it went. There _was_ nothing for him to do, and it galled him. He needed more information.

Grabbing his cell phone, he called New York again, but not the professor. Unfortunately, the person he sought didn't answer. He got Ororo instead. "Where's Frank?" Scott demanded.

There was a little catch in her breath, then she replied, "He is at the library."

"_Fuck_. Ro, what the hell is going on out there?"

"What do you mean?"

"Don't play fucking coy with me! What's happened to _Jean_?"

There was a moment of silence before her tight reply. "I am not playing 'coy.' You asked a rather unspecific question. As for what has happened to Jean, I am neither a doctor nor a geneticist, but my understanding from what Henry has told us is that Bruce's machine altered her DNA as well as theirs; it simply took longer to manifest. And since her mutation is psionic, not physical, it was not readily apparent. Her telepathic capacity has burst its previous bounds."

Scott sucked in breath. That alone was more information than Xavier had told him, and damn the professor for couching everything in platitudes. "You mean what happened to Hank and Bruce Banner happened to her?" His voice had squeaked up like a teenager's.

"Scott, do not panic. This is serious, yes, but if anyone is equipped to help Jean, it is the professor."

"He doesn't want me to come out there."

"Well, there really is no reason for you to. She is isolated in the danger room and none of us has seen her since she arrived."

"Not at all?"

"No."

"How did this happen anyway?"

And so Ororo told him what she knew of events at the hospital. The more he heard, the more alarmed he grew. "She's lost it, hasn't she?" he finally interrupted to ask.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean . . . Christ, I don't know what I mean. But last time this happened to her, when she was a kid, she told me she was catatonic . . . Fuck, fuck, fuck. She was _catatonic_, Ro, for almost two fucking _years_. She was catatonic. So they put her in a mental ward, and even after she woke up, she was out of her mind for two years more." He sank down on his knees and tried to keep from shaking. "Please tell me she's not crazy."

And on the other end of the phone line, Ororo had to wipe her eyes. "Oh, Scott. I am so sorry. I refuse to lie to you. She is not catatonic, no, but I do not think she is sane, either."

Scott bent his head and sobbed.

"Shhh," Ororo said in his ear. "Scott, remember - she is not a child any longer. And she has the professor. I do not think it will take her so long this time."

"Thanks," he whispered and shut off the phone, then knelt there, bent over, arms wrapped around himself. And out in New York, Ororo sat on the bed she shared with Francesco, staring at the phone. If it were Frank, how would she feel?

When Frank returned to the mansion a few hours later, she hugged his neck tightly. "What's wrong?" he asked her in French. They were alone in the den.

"I've talked to Scott."

"Ah," he hugged her back. "He's on his way home, then?"

Ororo pulled away to look at him. "He said nothing of the kind, actually. He asked the professor if he could, and was told not to." Her head tilted. "But he _will come_, won't he? He'll come back here." Frank gave a little shrug of one shoulder. "Francesco!" Ororo's eyes narrowed as her mind clicked through the bits and pieces of remembered conversations. "How long have you known this would happen to Jean? That's why you let the lab accident occur last summer, isn't it? Because you knew this would happen - and Scott would come back for her."

"He has to come back," was all Frank answered. "He has to come back and stay."

Ororo thought of the broken woman in the basement and the man crying for her a continent away. "Sometimes," she said coldly, "I hate you."

* * *

><p><em>"It's mind-boggling, to realize how tall they are, and how old." <em>

_"Yeah." _

_Jean and Scott had been lying on the forest floor in Redwood National Park on the Friday of her vacation. It had felt a bit odd, to take her to a place he'd once come with Clarice, but it had also felt right. He'd known she would appreciate the trees, and she had, so he'd shown her his trick of lying on his back, face to the sky so that the trees soared up and up all around, the living buttresses to great green cathedrals. If there was a god, this was his sanctuary.  
><em>

_"I think I know why you like them," she'd said. _

_"Why's that?"_

_"Because you're a Redwood yourself." _

_"Huh?" And he'd laughed. "I'm a _tree_?"_

_"You're proud, straight, solid, patient, always there. I turn to you when I need to know the world isn't falling apart. I can lean on you. I don't know what it is, but you make me feel safe."  
><em>

_He'd laughed. "_Stop! _You're going to give me a swelled head."  
><em>

_And she'd rolled up on an elbow to grin at him. "Your head's already swelled, Summers," and she'd swatted him with his hat. Later, she'd taken pictures of him there in the forest of sequoias._

* * *

><p>Scott got up off his knees and wiped his eyes beneath his glasses, and all the frustration of the past five months broke like a swell on the beach of decision. Even if he couldn't do anything specific for Jean, 'doing' was overrated. He needed to <em>be<em> there, like the trees. He'd planned to leave Berkeley at the end of this semester anyway. What difference did a few months make?

Thus decided, he pushed himself to his feet and stumbled back into his bedroom to take stock. He'd need moving boxes - rather more than he might have guessed as he'd acquired quite a lot in his three and a half years here - and he could rent a small U-Haul as he didn't have a car. Checking his watch, he saw that it was early yet, barely ten o'clock. If he hurried, he could pick up boxes, reserve a truck, and be back to pack in order to leave tomorrow. He'd stay up past midnight if he had to.

Much later that afternoon, EJ returned to find Scott buried in his bedroom with his personals in sorted piles, a dozen already-full boxes stacked in a corner of the living room. "What the fuck are you _doing_?" EJ asked.

"I have to go back to New York. Jean needs me. I'm leaving tomorrow."

Mouth agape, EJ dropped down on the stripped bed. "You mean leaving as in _moving_? Have you lost your _mind_, Slim? It's the middle of the fucking semester!"

Scott looked around without straightening up. "I know." Then he went back to taping a box shut. "She's sick, Eeej. The telepathy came back and Jean's really sick. She needs me." And he related the rest of the story to his friend while he worked. EJ sat, trying to take in this sudden upheaval, and bit his tongue because he'd known Scott long enough to know when there was no reasoning with him. Summers was going to do this, regardless of what anyone else said. Scott ended with, "Don't worry about my part of the rent for the last months of the lease. I already settled that with Mrs. Gale, and I've left you some cash for utilities and stuff."

"Man, I ain't worried about that. But I think you're jumping out a window before anyone's yelled fire."

Frowning, Scott twisted around sharply. "She needs me."

_No_, EJ thought to himself, _you need her_, and that was rather a different thing, but the end result was the same. EJ decided to try one last sally. "You talked to your profs yet? They letting you take incompletes for this semester?"

"Incompletes?" Scott laughed. "Fuck incompletes. I withdrew, Eeej. I withdrew from the university. I'm going home."


	18. And all the King's Men

Thoughts, dreams, scatterings of nightmares, all blew against her and clung, like old, wet newspapers, imprinting her with the perceptions of others. Mostly, she wrapped herself in women's reveries. Men's minds alarmed her, too aggressive, too sexual, too seductive in their alienness. But she tried on the minds of women like a little girl loose in her grandmother's attic, decked out in the antique lace of others' memories.

She didn't want to come down, to end playtime, and resisted being called. _Jean. Come back, Jean. _Instead, she fled into mental corners and hid. Sometimes, when he found her, she resisted, kicking out and rattling everything in the room with her telekinetic rage, like a cosseted poltergeist. But other times . . . other times she responded like a succubus. _I'll be anyone you want - Amelia, Moira . . . Erik. _She whispered into his mind. _I'll dress up in your memories of them. Only love me, love me, love me_ _best of all. _She was an actress with an audience of one, a telepathic chameleon, adopting the verbal patterns, mannerisms, and body language of his ghosts. _Who would know? _she asked, tempting him. _It would be our secret.  
><em>

_I would know. _Those temptations were easy to resist. However perfect her Mynah mimicry, she wasn't Amelia or Moira or Erik, and her imitation was mildly revolting, like a reflection in oily bilge water. He left her when she resorted to those tricks, and she, desperate, reached deeper, dug to the bottom of his mental attic chests and unfolded what he'd concealed even from himself. Then she came to him not as others, but as Jean-Grey-who-had-been. The innocent, barely pubescent girl with the burning fire in her mind who'd called to him twenty years ago, the trapped Rapunzel in her doorless tower, seeking her rescuer. _Teach me. Tutor me. Save me. _She laid herself bare to him like a whore on her back with her legs spread.

And sweating, he fled. She laughed, delighted with her power, flexing the fire wings of it, burning him.

It saved her from facing herself.

* * *

><p>Only EJ and Lee were there to see Scott off when he finally climbed into the Ryder truck to leave California on a Wednesday morning, three weeks after Valentine's Day, and three and a half years after his initial arrival. Everyone else had class, or work. They'd said their goodbyes to Scott the night before, and now it was down to EJ and Lee to help him load his belongings into the truck and tie them down. It took them until mid-morning.<p>

EJ kept silent about his reservations. Lee didn't. Neither made a dint in Scott's resolution. "Summers," Lee told him finally, "you make me want to pink-belly you to death."

Laughing, he hugged her, lifting her off the ground to spin her around. "You keep an eye on EJ for me, okay?"

"Yeah, like he listens to me."

Scott let her go and turned to face EJ - and here at the end, found nothing to say. In all his years, he'd never had a friend like this man and there really wasn't anything that could express either his gratitude for the friendship, or the depth of his affection. They embraced, fierce like a contest, mute with emotion. "I'm gonna miss you, man," EJ said finally. Scott simply nodded, glad his eyes were open and the beams blew away his tears. He needed to get back to New York, but that didn't make this leave-taking easier.

Pushing away, he said, "I've gotta go, or I'm not going to get anywhere today." And he climbed into the truck to start the engine, rolling down the window so he could wave as he put the truck in gear and pulled away. EJ chased along beside it a little way until the truck hit the street, then EJ slapped the side as Scott drove away. Scott watched in the rearview mirror for as long he could see the figures of EJ and Lee, still waving.

Choosing a route had been a gamble in early March when snows tended to come heavy and temperatures could go from mild to blizzard conditions overnight. He could make better time taking I-80 due east, but if he hit bad snow in the Rockies between Salt Lake City and Cheyenne, he could be stranded for days. Listening to the weather the night before, the casters predicted a stretch of mild days, so he'd decided to try the northern route. If he swung south, he'd add as much as a day to a trip that would already take at least four and a half. The first night, he got as far as Winnemucca in central Nevada and checked into a Super 8 Motel. There, he sat by the window of his second story guestroom and stared out at the desert night sky, black above black. He held his cell phone in his hand, but didn't use it. It wasn't even on. No one in New York knew he was on the way. He'd learned years ago that it was easier to get forgiveness than permission.

Sometimes the cold, rational part of his mind asserted itself to ask why he'd just thrown away his graduate career. He had no illusions that withdrawing from Berkeley and abandoning an assistantship mid-semester would net him recommendation letters later for a school transfer. Jean was not sister, wife, nor even girlfriend, and her situation wasn't terminal. Most damning of all - there was nothing he could do for her. Yet he'd abandoned all his commitments without a second thought.

Weren't there times, though, when common sense had to be chucked in favor of integrity? Had he just committed the most irresponsible act of his life, or the most steadfast? He supposed it depended on one's perspective, but even if there were nothing he could do, he couldn't bear living forever with the knowledge that he hadn't gone to be with her. Maybe that was love, or maybe it was just obsession, but it drove him.

It drove him for four more days and almost three thousand miles. One dream lay discarded behind, but his whole life lay ahead. He pursued it with cyclopean vision.

* * *

><p>She was a shadow of herself, gray like wolves slipping in and out of trees, fragmented into a pack. This wolf was the lead hunter, that too shy. This wolf challenged for dominance, that fought to keep it. She was the alpha female and the cub, whichever she needed to be, and she hid among the trunks of others' personalities, refusing to be driven from her wood.<p>

He called; she fled. He pursued; she turned to attack, vicious in her desperation, driving him off so she could fade away again into the forest of others' individuality. It was safe here, living others' dreams instead of her own. Had she ever had a dream of her own, or had they always been someone else's? Would she even know herself in the mirror?

* * *

><p>Scott's return to Westchester was quiet. He'd made a final push of fifteen and a half hours in one day and arrived after eleven in the evening, stupid with exhaustion. The mansion was mostly dark and he left the Ryder truck parked on the driveway before grabbing his suitcase and his guitar and heading upstairs to the room that had used to be his, and would be again if the professor let him stay. One of his realizations on the long drive back was that there might be no welcome for him at the end of it. He wasn't Xavier's real son; there was no reason that the professor had to take him in again.<p>

And what would he do then, he wondered? At the root of it, and despite his clashes with his father, he was not a boy much given to rebellion; it upset him to let others down and as tired as he was, he found it hard to get to sleep. The limbo of the road was over, and in the morning, he would face the consequences of his choices.

Morning came sooner than he might have wished, although he didn't wake until nearly noon. He showered and dressed in a wrinkled t-shirt and dirty jeans, and made his way downstairs. He was sure that someone had noticed the moving truck by now.

Ororo was the first person he ran into. She stopped dead in the main hall as she spotted him coming down the stairs. Her hands were on her hips, her head tipped curiously. "Frank said the truck was yours." Scott didn't reply, merely made his way down to the landing. "The professor is in the sub-basement," she said. "He could not wait all morning for you to wake."

"How's Jean?"

"The same, so far as I know."

"Is Xavier going to let me stay?"

Ororo's expression was startled. "Why wouldn't he?"

"He told me not to come back. I did anyway."

"I think that he is angry with you, yes, but Scott, why would he not permit you to stay?"

Scott shrugged and looked off, his expression drawn with misery. "Everything I have is due to him, but I defied him."

Walking over, Ororo slipped her arm through his and drew him towards the kitchen. "Why _did_ you come back?"

Helplessly, he shrugged. "I had to."

"You will need a better reason than that. If you can defend yourself as a man, Scott, then the professor will treat you as one. If you act only as a boy, then _that_ is how he will treat you."

It was perfectly reasonable, but he still wasn't sure how to explain himself. Maybe his reasons _were_ those of a boy, personal and selfish. "I felt like I should be here," he said finally. "I wasn't going to stay in Berkeley, not after this past year . . . ." He sighed. "I decided I should come back and help." He wasn't sure what he had to offer, but he'd do what he could. "Where are the students?"

"Probably with Henry in the arboretum; he has taken over the teaching for the past week."

They'd reached the kitchen and Scott helped himself to a mug of coffee. It had been stewing for hours and smelled ripe and wretched, but he needed the caffeine. "You and Frank want to help me unload that truck so I can get it back to a rental place? It's not very full. The only reason I rented a truck instead of a trailer is that I didn't have a car."

So Ororo, Frank and Scott unloaded thirty-four boxes (half of them books), a papazan chair, his bass equipment, a bike, a filing cabinet, a computer desk, and his stereo. He'd left the rest of his furniture behind. Coming back to Westchester, he didn't need it. He then went with Ororo to return the truck and she drove him back to the mansion. It was nearly suppertime by then, classes were over for the day, and the professor had emerged from the sub-basement. He came motoring out of his office to meet Scott in the main hall and everyone else fled for cover, or was hastily shepherded away.

If Xavier appreciated the unexpected privacy, he found disturbing the obvious perception that what was to come between himself and Scott qualified as a clash of ground troops. He found even more dismaying the apprehension in Scott's own mind regarding his welcome at the mansion. Charles would have thought Scott realized by now that he rated higher in Xavier's affections. Wounded by that doubt, Xavier indicated the open office door behind him and spoke more sharply than he might have otherwise. "I gather you are unpacked and caught up on sleep?"

Entering the professor's sanctum, Scott shifted nervously and replied, "Yes, sir. Or rather, the boxes are unloaded off the truck. I put most of them in the room I had and some in the room next door until I can get them unpacked. If that's okay, I mean."

Letting out his breath in frustration, Xavier almost slammed his office door. "'_Okay?_' Hardly, Scott. None of this is 'okay.'"

And panic flashed all through the boy, as strong as iodine and bruised in color. "Please, don't make me leave until I know she'll be all right." It was desperate like a child's pleading, and Xavier turned his chair away in anger, motoring towards the long window in his office to stare out at the shriveled, brown grass of early March. Was this truly the edge of spring?

"I have no intension of making you leave. But if you think that I can approve of this rash course of action, you are sadly mistaken. I gather - as you have returned to New York with all your belongings - that you have withdrawn from the university and left your roommate in the lurch?"

And it was this alchemy of accusation that altered Scott's inner mood from fear to anger. "No, I didn't leave him in the lurch. I used my part of our band earnings to cover rent and utilities until the lease ran out, and the rest to rent the truck. I knew you wouldn't approve of me coming back, so I didn't use your money, sir."

Xavier turned the chair so fast, its motor protested with a whine. _"How many times do I have to tell you it is not about the money?_" he thundered both aloud and telepathically. Scott put a hand to his head and winced, but his jaw was set in a way Xavier recognized as pure Summers stubbornness. And - in all honesty - he had to admit that a part of him was pleased Scott had taken fiscal responsibility for his own choices, even while he was irritated at the waste of Scott's savings for what was, by Xavier's own reckoning, a pittance.

"Scott, sit down," he said finally. The boy obeyed, his expression a cross between obstinate and uncertain. "It seems that somewhere in the past five years, a few crucial matters have escaped your attention. Listen closely because I do not intend to repeat this." Charles sat up straighter in his chair and - because personal revelations made him even more uncomfortable than they made Scott - focused on a point above Scott's shoulder. "Short of a profound personality change that would lead you to commit atrocities of which I know you're otherwise incapable," his voice was dry, "nothing will ever cause me to reject you. As long as I am living, you will have a place in my house. As I have said before, I do not have a son, I will never have a son" - his gaze shifted for a moment to catch Scott's eyes behind the glasses - "_you_ are my son."

He felt that strike the boy like a sucker punch, hard and low, knocking the breath out of him. Painful gratitude bloomed in Scott's chest. "Sir - "

Xavier held up a hand. "I am not finished." Scott subsided. "I am angry with you because you made a rash and unconsidered decision, and did it based on sentiment." Scott started to speak again, but Xavier simply held up the same hand. "I realize you were planning to transfer from Berkeley at the end of the semester, nor would I debate your reasons for doing so. But that was not why you left; it simply made your departure easier to excuse to yourself." The sudden flush in Scott's cheeks told Charles that he'd struck a nerve. "What purpose, I ask, do you think your presence here will serve?"

There was a long silence, then Scott replied quietly, "Ororo said you've been spending most of each day with Jean, and Hank's taken over the teaching. I do have an education degree. That's what I originally went to Berkeley _for_. I could substitute in a pinch, help Hank out with math."

It was, Xavier thought, rather good for a cobbled-together excuse. It was even a reasonable suggestion. "I'll see to it that Henry is notified of your offer. I'm quite sure he'll be delighted to turn over some responsibility to you for the duration. But that is not anything you knew when you left California. So I ask again - what purpose do you think your presence can serve?"

Scott was well aware that a person's motives were transparent to Xavier, and not only because he was a telepath. Yet Scott remembered Ororo's advice not to seem like a boy, so he mulled over what answer to give that might convince the professor he hadn't acted like a flighty child. The silence stretched. Xavier broke it to prod, "Surely, Mr. Summers, you had _something_ in mind?"

Scott sighed, and unable to produce anything especially clever, he settled on something honest. "I'd like to see her. I want her know someone's out here waiting for her."

"I told you once already, that's impossible; she can't filter out the thoughts of an unshielded mind."

"I know, sir. But I'm not just _any_ mind." He swallowed, then put forth the idea he'd been mulling since about Des Moines. "She's got to learn to shield, right? And she'll have to start with someone who can't do it for her, like you, but who she knows and trusts. She told me once that I was like a Redwood to her. Steady." He shrugged. It was artless. "So I volunteer."

Charles Xavier was stunned. Not because Scott apparently had no idea of the depth of Jean's mental dissolution; that, he would have expected. He was stunned by Scott's offer. "Do you have any idea what you're suggesting?" he asked. "She cannot filter out thoughts, Scott. She would know _everything_ about you."

But the boy only nodded once, decisively. He'd worked that out for himself. "I know."

"You'd still volunteer?"

"Yes, sir. I have nothing to hide from her. Well, nothing beyond stupid stuff."

Far more deeply private, Xavier shook his head in mute wonder. "When it comes time for that . . . perhaps. But we are some way yet from such a stage." He narrowed his eyes thoughtfully and steepled his hands, but decided Scott deserved to know the full extent of the situation. "Jean is still fragmented within her own mind, son. She cannot work on shielding until there is a 'Jean' again to shield."

Surprised, Scott sat back a little. "But I thought you'd isolated her in the Danger Room? She can't hear other minds down there, can she?"

"No, she can't. But she heard quite enough of them before we could get her there. Imagine being opened to hundreds of thoughts, memories, sensations - like the floodgates of heaven - until you no longer know which are yours and which are borrowed? Working with her is rather like a papyrologist who must sift through thousands of mixed up scroll fragments to find only those belonging to one scroll called 'Jean.' That is, I think, a metaphor the archaeologist in you can appreciate."

Scott's jaw had dropped. "But that could take - "

"Months, quite likely." He deliberately refrained from 'years' - he wasn't (yet) so pessimistic as that. But he had no illusions that this would be quick or easy.

Scott had looked away. He was only now beginning to grasp the enormity of what Jean had suffered. What he understood less was why Xavier hadn't suffered similarly, all those years ago. "How did you manage? When you were a boy, I mean? How did you get through it?"

"My telepathy is different." Xavier picked up a globe from his desk, a copy of the earth done in lapis and malachite with gold wire to mark the boundaries of countries. "Yes, Jean and I are both telepaths, but how that expresses itself isn't the same. For whatever reason, I have stronger natural shields." In fact, Xavier had a very good idea why that was the case, but he didn't intend to share it with Scott. "When I first realized that I could 'read' the minds of others, even influence them, the scope of my reach was actually rather limited. Now, of course, I can read multiple minds at once, but I had to learn to overcome my own shields. Jean has the opposite problem. She cannot block _out_ other minds, nor sort them. The end result is that she has been drowned by other's thoughts." He shook his head. "Unfortunately, she doesn't seem terribly interested in finding her way back to us, either."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that, up to this point, she's largely resisted my attempts to reach her. I could reassemble her mind without her assistance - I did so once before - but it takes far longer, and she has many more memories now than when she was a child."

Scott chewed on that. "Why's she resisting?" he asked softly, more to himself than the professor, but Xavier answered anyway.

"I think that she - like any of us - needs a reason to continue. Unfortunately, since it's stress that caused this collapse, it's also stress that makes escape that much more appealing."

"So basically you're saying she needs a reason to come back?"

"Correct. If she wished to return, the process would be far easier - and far faster."

Mental gears turned and clicked, and Scott tilted his head to the side. "I can make her come back, sir. You say she can't keep out somebody's else's thoughts, so put me in there with her. I know her. She's my best friend. I can make her come back."

It was, Xavier thought, quite astonishingly arrogant - and utterly innocent in that.

It was also quite possibly correct.

Early necessity had taught Charles to work alone. He rarely accepted, or even considered, assistance from others, and he knew Jean far better than Scott did, in any case - but she knew his dark sides, too, and could exploit them. He could _not_ allow passion to act as his lure. He had to remain detached, pedagogical.

Scott had no dark sides that she could exploit in the same way, and he would willingly bare all, use his passion to bring her back. He had that luxury. In short, Scott Summers was exactly the bait that Xavier needed. Scott was Percival, the Fisher King who guarded the grail stone that would allow the phoenix to rise from her ashes.

It just might work. Or it might drive her further into her borrowed memories and drive Scott around the bend in the process. But that was the nature of 'calculated risk,' and frankly, Xavier found the latter far less likely than the former. Scott's psyche had never been weak. Nonetheless, fairness required him to say, "You do realize there is some risk to yourself? She could push all those memories onto _you_. Even if she did not, you would still be . . . wading . . . through them." Scott merely shrugged with one shoulder. "It isn't something to make light of," Xavier warned.

"I'm not making light of it. But I'm not afraid." He gave the professor a small smile. "You know I'm the best chance she has to come out of this quickly or you wouldn't even be telling me the risks." He stood up, hands clasped behind his back. "I'm ready when you are."

At that, Xavier snorted. "Well, _I_ won't be ready again until tomorrow morning. I've had a very long day and very little lunch. I need both food and sleep. I suggest that you avail yourself of the same."

Scott might have protested but he was both pragmatic and reasonable by temperament. Now that he knew he'd get what he wanted - to see Jean - he could bide his time and bow to common sense. Supper and sleep it would be.

* * *

><p>"Remember, Scott," Xavier said when they had reached the sub-basement and stood outside the Danger Room door, "Jean has been here for a week and a half, and her unique situation makes it impossible to permit just anyone to see her. Even Henry has been in only three times." Xavier paused, and Scott just frowned. He wasn't sure what point the professor was trying to make, but it was clear from his unhappy expression that he was trying to make one and his New England reticence prevented him from elaborating on it clearly. Then he punched in the key-code to open the first door and they waited for the light to switch to ready and passed inside the short hallway leading to the inner chamber. Scott glanced down at himself. He was dressed in a plain t-shirt and jeans. The professor had warned him not to wear any jewelry that Jean could energize, even a watch, or a shirt with buttons, and he wore lace-less sandals on his feet. "She is far from a passive victim," Xavier had warned.<p>

The inner door slid aside and Scott looked in on a mini-hurricane. There weren't that many items inside the room, but what wasn't nailed down had been lifted into the air. She'd obviously heard them coming and was backed into a corner, arms wrapped protectively around her chest. Scott's jaw dropped. Though dressed in (clean) hospital scrubs, it was clear she hadn't had a bath in some time and Scott understood now to what Xavier had been alluding earlier. But it wasn't just a failure in hygiene that shocked him. She'd yanked out clumps of her hair, and her face and forearms had been scored by her own nails. "Goddamn!" he muttered, and took three hurried steps forward, but she shrank back, whimpering, and the flying objects spun faster. He stopped cold. "Jean," he said softly, "I'm not going to hurt you. Please put the stuff down. It's me. It's Scott. I'd never hurt you. I'd never, ever let anything hurt you."

Some moments passed in silence as the plastic water bottle, comb, toilet paper, and the pillow and blanket from the cot continued to circle through the air. Even the cot itself remained raised, and the little table, and the small portable toilet, but none of it threatened him directly. Scott waited, not moving a muscle. He could feel her mind brushing against his, dancing around him, _tasting_ him. It was the strangest sensation, utterly different from when Xavier read his thoughts. Jean's touch was close, intimate, almost erotic. He studied her across the distance and the confused fragility he found in her expression made him sick. It was Jean's face but not Jean, and both distraught and disheartened he brought his most recent memories of her to the forefront of his mind and _thrust_ them at her. "Scott -" Xavier hissed in a whisper, and perhaps his act had been the wrong thing to do, overly rash, but Scott's heart was breaking.

She didn't react hostilely. Instead, the objects she'd raised settled back into place and her head tilted sideways, as if curious. Then her mind reached out and _grabbed_ his. This wasn't a tasting. This was a crushing embrace, pressing him _into_ her - then she slid inside him, slicing, and he was vivisected. He might have screamed but he'd lost touch with his physical self, and it wasn't pain of any kind he was used to; it wasn't properly pain at all. He simply had no words to describe such utter nakedness.

**_Jean! Stop it!_**

She stopped.

From her perspective, the Teacher had brought her a present. She'd licked him all over, sampling his flavor, sharp and bright like cinnamon and apples. She'd peered inside, finding a reflection that had wavered like water when breathed on - a redheaded girl, and she'd wondered if she should know her? Curiosity had pulled her closer, sliding around him and through, weaving her weft into his warp. So many desires, dreams, angers, joys, all checked by a bridled aggression, yet he didn't frighten her like most men. Or perhaps she'd simply grown more daring in her curiosity. She pressed deeper.

He resisted. _Jean, stop it! _And she could feel his struggle against a sense of terrible pressure.

She withdrew a little. She didn't want to break her apples-and-cinnamon present. Instead of piercing him with her shuttle, she stroked his thoughts, twining around him in an ivy investigation, digging in with little probing roots, cracking the concrete of his control. She moved towards him physically as well, her eyes half-lidded and her fingers worming into his. His skin was warm, like his memories, and she let her palms travel up to his cheeks. His erection lay hard between them and she stroked it, too, with mental fingers, squeezing in the right places, rubbing, using his own body-knowledge to arouse him painfully within moments. His muscles quivered and he rose up on his toes. "Jean! Quit!" He was embarrassed, excited, confused and put off - all at once.

_Who's this Jean?_ she asked. Voices were so awkward.

_You are. _

_If you want. I can be anyone you want. We'll play pretend. _

_I don't want _'anyone_.' I don't want pretend; I want Jean - you, the you you used to be. _

_Show me who she was and I'll be her if you'll love me. _

_I loved you already. Look inside yourself and I'll show you who you are. _

She twisted away; he reached for her but she slid out of his grasp. _I don't want to look inside. _

_Why not? _

_There's nothing in there. _

_Yes, there is. There's you. _

_Who am I? What's in a name? Who's Jean? I am who I choose to be, or who others want me to be. That's all I was anyway. _

_Not true! _

_How would you know? _

Scott's thoughts grew sly. _And how do _you_ know? If you can claim to know, then Jean's still in there. And I love that Jean. _

_You never knew that Jean. You made up a fantasy in your mind. _

_No, I didn't. _

_Yes, you did. _And vicious in her anger, she vomited the distorted images she'd taken from his own thoughts. That_ was never Jean. _

But they were old images, mostly, and he replied, _I know. _And he did know. He could recognize the distortions, and he could see the truth. It flickered in front of him now, fragile but angry, and no longer an echo of others' echoes, no longer the ash of others' fire. She was fire of her own. _I love the real Jean.  
><em>

_You love a frightened, temperamental, egotistic hypocrite? _

_I love a woman who's curious and intelligent, gracious - who wants others to love her, sometimes too much. If that's a fault, it's one a lot of us share. I don't want a perfect woman. I just want my Jean back.  
><em>

She felt around the edges of his mind for the cracks of falsehood, but found none. He meant it. _You could love that Jean?  
><em>

_I do love that Jean. I need a friend who screws up sometimes, so I don't feel so stupid when I do. I need someone who'll forgive me, and who sometimes needs to be forgiven. I need someone I can tell my secrets to, and who won't laugh even when they're laughable. I need someone to protect, and someone who'll protect me. I need someone who won't always let me be right, but who doesn't always have to be right, either. I need somebody who wants to fuck my brains out, and who'll talk to me about philosophy afterwards.  
><em>

She was a bit startled by the last, and he felt her mental bubble of laughter, but there was no room here for concealing a part of the truth. Not his truth, and not hers, either. She was turned on by the thought of fucking him. Not making love, nothing so controlled. She wanted to fuck him; it ran deep in her, burning like magma, a little wild. It belonged to her body, not her mind, and she'd never been entirely comfortable with her body. Wasn't her gift all about the psychic? Mind over matter and mental communication. She existed in the realm of thought, but she had a body and she'd never been too sure what to do with it. And in that, Xavier couldn't help her. He'd never been sure what to do with his, either. Scott knew; Scott wasn't afraid of his body even while he wasn't ruled by it. Maybe she'd let him teach her.

But not just now. She was curious, but timid, inclined to circle something and watch before committing herself, even while a more primal part of her would have liked to leap in with both feet. But that primal part had been forced into submission for too many years. Scott sensed as much and didn't press. He could be a patient hunter, and he'd woo her if that's what she wanted. Acquiescing to her other curiosity - about herself - he let her use his recollections as an entry point to sort through the swamp in her head, deciding which memories were hers, and which couldn't be. She'd never been a mother, or a hooker, or a secretary, or an athlete. She'd never lived outside New York; she'd never been poor; she wasn't a minority. Yet she gave up those parts of 'herself' reluctantly. They offered views of the world from a new paradigm that fascinated her scientist's curiosity, or sometimes moved her gut. She'd explored the upstairs of many different houses, laughing and weeping and aching right along with those who lived there.

He was harder, more detached, and he observed her struggle with both protectiveness and horror. She'd seen things - had as good as lived through them - that he'd have kept from her forever, if he could. And then there were events he'd never thought to experience from the inside himself - the act of giving birth, of nursing, or of being on the woman's end during sex. It was seductive in its insight, and he recalled his long-ago conversation with Lee, about men and women and gender curiosity. He also recalled Jean's remark that she didn't have to wonder; she knew - and he finally understood what she'd meant. Women no longer seemed such a mystery to him, even while they remained fundamentally Other, and if he'd ever received a gift he hadn't asked for but valued more highly, he couldn't name it.

Her personal reconstruction was leading her further inside herself, and her hold on his mind loosened until he could swim up to a clearer consciousness of the room around them. At some point, they'd sat down in the middle of the metal floor with Jean resting between his knees, one of her shoulders propped against his chest and both his arms around her body. It was intimate, but easy. He lifted a hand to press her head into his shoulder and slipped fingers through her greasy hair, lightly brushing the patches where she'd ripped it out by the roots and it had scabbed over. She needed a bath. Between shock and her appropriation of his awareness, he hadn't registered it before, but her body odor pressed on him now. This was rather different than the subtle scent of her on his sheets. A woman had a smell as strong in its own way as any man's, heavy with musk and sharply sour, and he hated it that he noticed, but olfactory senses were primal and difficult to disregard. He listened to her breathe and felt her mind shift in his, but lightly. He was her center, her stabilization, her Redwood.

Xavier was no longer in the room and he wondered where the professor had gone, and for how long he'd watched before departing. For that matter, he wondered how long they'd been in there. Hours, apparently. His bladder was demanding to be emptied. He ignored it and waited until he simply couldn't wait any more. Whatever the mind did, the body continued to function and he'd had three cups of coffee that morning. He didn't, though, need to be touching Jean to remain present for her telepathically, so he unwound himself from her embrace and stood up. His joints popped. She didn't remain sitting but slumped over to the floor, apparently unaware. He made his way to the plastic portable toilet, white and antiseptic, and raised the lid, unzipping. Jean was too out of it to see. But as he relieved himself, he became aware that she was _observing_ - mentally - and it startled him so much, the stream of yellow stopped for a moment. Yet wasn't this simply the reverse of his own curiosity about women earlier? How _did_ his body feel to her?

_Not so different,_ she sent, amused. _It's the same physical function, after all. Finish please; it's my turn next.  
><em>

He glanced over his shoulder to see her sitting up now, her arms wrapped around her drawn up knees. Her eyes were open, but her head was turned politely away, a small smile playing across her face. It was a silly gesture, considering, but it was evidence of her manners. He finished and zipped up, crossing to kneel beside her and run a thumb down her cheek. She still appeared frail, and slightly cloudy-headed, and he knew the process was far from resolved, but this was _her_ sweet face, animated by _her_ thoughts. "Welcome back," he said softly, then helped her to stand, waiting politely with his own back turned while she made use of the toilet. He could still feel the touch of her mind, but only as mental fingers on skin overlaying the lineament of his thoughts.

"I need a shower," she said, her voice hoarse. He politely refrained from comment, but she could sense his silent agreement anyway and shook her head, amused. "You don't have to be coy, Scott. I stink."

"Do you want me to go get some things from your room for you? Clothes, I mean."

"That would be kind, yes, but I'm not sure I can safely leave _to_ shower."

"Not even in the locker room next door?" he asked.

"I don't know. I'm not sure how shielded the sub-basement is."

"I'll find the professor and ask." But when he saw faint alarm cross her features, he added, "Is that okay?"

"I, um - I guess so."

"I won't leave if you don't want me to."

Her eyes crinkled with an amusement that was mostly self-directed. "I'm all right, Scott. You're just very . . . solid, to lean against."

"I'll be back as soon as I can."

Her smile widened at his earnestness. "I know you will. Go on."

* * *

><p>When Scott had delivered his news to an astonished Xavier, he hurried upstairs to Jean's room to fetch her clothing. Passing the antique grandfather clock in the second-floor hallway, he noted that the hands read almost two in the afternoon and he understood then why he was famished. Reaching Jean's room, he slipped inside and glanced around. He wasn't sure what she might want and decided to assemble a small collection, letting her choose for herself. A small bag sat on the bottom of her closet for her nights on call; he grabbed that to pack jeans and khakis, loose, comfortable shirts, socks, and moccasins. She'd been barefoot when he'd seen her, but the sub-basement could be frigid. Once he had three-days-worth of clothes, he collected underwear. That made him blush, even alone in her room. God knew he'd fantasized about Jean's underwear often enough, but had never expected to get his hands on it (if not necessarily in it). He was surprised and a bit disappointed to find the drawer contained mostly sensible cotton rather than fashionable nylon and lace, and then was amused at himself for his reaction. Nonetheless, a few sexy pieces were stashed in the back, and he couldn't resist fingering the silky fabric. "Fetish, Summers?" he muttered but didn't dare put those in her suitcase, selecting cotton instead, then he studied the bras. There weren't nearly so many of those, and he wondered - did a woman not change her bra every day, or did Jean just have fewer of them? Befuddled, he finally packed three anyway, just in case.<p>

Next came toiletries and makeup; Jean was testy about the latter. He'd never seen her without makeup even before her visit, and during it, she'd refused to come out after a shower before her "face" was on. He'd thought that silly, but after being inside her head, he had a better appreciation for her deeply rooted fear that no one could like the 'real' Jean. And what on earth had caused that, he wondered?

There were a lot of things he wondered, but now wasn't the time to dwell on them; it was easier to focus on smaller matters. He finished packing.

* * *

><p>In the sub-basement below, Xavier faced a Jean solitary for the first time in two weeks. He was pleased, and astounded, but also deeply disturbed by what had occurred between her and Scott. He'd hoped that bringing Scott along would encourage and accelerate her recovery, but he'd never dreamed she'd regain her senses (however tenuously) so fast. This, however, pleased him. What troubled him was the increasing depth of Jean's attachment to the boy. He'd known for some time that their "friendship" had crossed any traditional boundaries, and he'd offered what he'd hoped were sufficient admonitions to keep it in check, but apparently, not admonitions enough. Jean had <em>bonded<em> to Scott, created a permanent psychic link - though he wondered if even she realized that yet. In any case, he couldn't but see it as a development _mal à propos_.

"It'll be safe for me to come out?" she asked now when he entered the room.

"For this, quite safe. I can shield you." A shower would do her a world of good, and he escorted her from the room, guarded by the bulwark of his own mind. "Scott has gone to fetch you some clothing," he said.

"I know," she replied, smiling softly. It was the secret smile of a woman in love, and he sighed.

"Jean - please recall what I said to you on the phone about Scott when you were in California. None of that has changed in the past month. Scott is twenty-two. You are thirty. That is a generational gap, and I fear that the emotional needs driving the two of you together are not entirely healthy."

He felt both her shame and her resistance flare powerfully, but she didn't reply, merely turned away with thinned lips to enter the showers. In fact, she wasn't at all sure what to think. On the one hand, playing by social convention hadn't made her parents' marriage happy. She was convinced that her father had taken the chairship of the Bard history department as an excuse to spend as little time at home with her mother as possible.

And yet, and yet, and yet . . . she was loathe to defy the professor. Moreover, he was right. She knew there was an age gap, and if Scott might no longer be a boy, he hadn't so long been a man, either. She saw elements of the boy in him still and thought that perhaps they should wait. If this thing between them was real, it would still be there in a couple years.

* * *

><p>When Scott arrived back downstairs with Jean's suitcase, he found the professor waiting in the locker area outside the women and men's showers, brows drawn in concentration. Scott didn't disturb him but slipped past into the women's shower area. Entering, he kept his eyes on the floor. He could hear the rush of water, and moved cautiously around the tiled privacy wall, but the dressing area was empty. Along two walls were benches - her hospital-green clothes discarded in a heap on one - and a third had sinks with mirrors and a little alcove with a few bathroom stalls. Off to the left was the shower area. Steam rolled out, fogging his glasses and preventing him from seeing anything even if he'd wanted to, and he didn't want to. After that morning, he was confident he'd get his chance, but right now, what she needed most was privacy, not his prurient intrusion.<p>

He set down the suitcase on a bench and she heard the thud even over the pound of water. Alarmed, she called, "Who's there?"

"It's just me. I brought your stuff, including shampoo if you need it. And clothes. I didn't know what you'd want, so I threw in different things. If you don't like them, or want something else, I can go back . . ."

He trailed off. He was babbling; she was laughing. "It's fine," she called. "I'm sure it's fine, Scott. Thank you."

"Okay. I'll . . . go on outside and, y'know, wait."

_Oh, even better, Summers,_ he thought and slapped his forehead; even an _unseen_ naked woman could render him imbecilic. Jean herself remained amused. Under Xavier's telepathic umbrella, she couldn't swim like a fish through his thoughts, but she could sense the edge of his emotions and his embarrassment was palpable, as was the tickle of mild arousal overlaid by a tender concern - altogether a complex blend of emotional spices. She could also pick up the buzz of plain old physical hunger. Scott still had a young man's metabolism, and with the demands of his mutation, he couldn't afford to miss meals. "Scott," she called, "I'll likely be a while. Go upstairs, please, and eat lunch." She could _feel_ that he was going to protest. "Don't argue. Doctor's orders. I'll still be here when you're done, trust me." Her voice was wry.

And while he did, in fact, want to protest, his body was telling him to acquiesce, so he left again, heading upstairs to duck into the kitchen where Valeria Placido, Frank's mother, was cleaning up from lunch. "And where were you all day?" she asked him in Italian.

"Busy," he replied in the same language. He'd brushed up on it in college, using Frank and his mom for practice. Sticking his head in one of the industrial refrigerators, he searched for a quick snack.

"No, no, no!" she said, "You Americans! You eat like uncivilized beasts!" And she hustled him over to a table, where she stuffed him on soup, bread with olive oil and cheese, and meat ravioli. While he didn't appreciate the delay, with Valeria watching, he could hardly grab his food and run. Italians took meals seriously in the same way that Americans took sports. (For that matter, Italians took sports seriously, too, when it came to soccer.) And Valeria seemed to think it her own brand of cultural education to teach the silly Americans to eat right. He could no more get out of a two-course lunch, and conversation with it - half in English, half in Italian - than he could fly. So almost an hour passed before he was free to return to the sub-basement. Being dreadfully late already, he swung by the rec room to see what he could find to entertain Jean during her exile to the nether regions.

While Scott was thus occupied, Jean had finished her shower, emerging - arms wrapped around herself, hands clasping elbows - to survey the damage of her dementia in the long mirrors of the dressing area. She'd grown so painfully thin, she could count her ribs, and the bones of her hips protruded like a sweep of boat hulls. Her breasts were even smaller than usual while her kneecaps and collarbones and wrists looked huge; her face was hollow-cheeked and lantern-jawed, and her eyes were shadowed and sunken. Worse yet, she'd yanked out chunks of hair at both temples and there were scratches on the skin of her face and neck and arms. Her skin was sallow.

Scott had said he loved her, looking like this? She was astonished.

Turning, she went to see what he'd packed for her, and was amused by his choices. Comfort clothes, almost unisex - he still thought like a college boy, but under the circumstances, she didn't mind, and slipped on khakis and an Old Navy sweatshirt. It was, in fact, one of _his_, and she wondered if he'd recognized it. She chose it because she wanted to be surrounded by him.

When she finally emerged, clean again with teeth brushed and face painted, Scott still wasn't back. Xavier led her into the Danger Room and shut the door. "Scott - " she began.

" - can _knock_," Xavier replied, though he'd covertly engaged the 'occupied' light and hoped the boy would see it and return upstairs. However much Scott might provide Jean with a point of stabilization, the longer they remained in one another's company during this critical period, the deeper the bonding would run. It was a dangerous game he played, and a ruthless one, using the attachment between the two in order to heal Jean more quickly, but preventing it from following its logical course to an end he couldn't condone, for either Jean or Scott's sake. This wasn't, he realized, quite ethical, but it was necessary, and when pushed, Xavier was a pragmatist.

"Although your self-awareness has returned," Xavier began now, "you and I both know that the reassembly of memories is not complete, and may not be for some time . . . " And thus, the next stage in her healing began.

When Scott did arrive downstairs, he did exactly what Xavier had expected: he found the door shut, the occupied light on, and assumed he'd be intruding. So he left his offering of games and puzzles outside the door and went back upstairs, whiling away the afternoon by unpacking some of his boxes, talking to Hank about the various students' mathematics placements, and cycling on the path around the lake until supper. For the first time since his return, he ate with the rest in a dining hall setting that emphasized for him the mansion's shift from intimate circle to something more institutional and organized. The hall's long oak tables had acquired benches instead of chairs, and the sideboard was stuffed with various dishes for students to help themselves, buffet style. An antique tapestry had been replaced by white boards, one listing student duty areas and another announcing stable riding schedules and when the bus would leave on Saturday for a trip into White Plains to the Westchester Mall. Scott thought the boards horridly out of place in a room of dark-wood moldings, heavy velvet drapes and a coffered ceiling with decorative medallions. The eleven current students sat at one table while the handful of former students - now 'grown ups' - occupied another. He found it all rather disconcerting, a sentiment only heightened when the thirteen-year-old Jubilee addressed him as "Mr. Summers." For a moment, he'd honestly not realized she'd been speaking to him.

At least Bobby treated him no differently, and just to prove he wasn't an antique, Scott engaged the boy on an unoccupied bench in a game of table football with a folded napkin. They became so engrossed that Scott almost missed Warren's arrival until a puff of wind from a wing swept the paper 'ball' onto the floor. "Hey, man!" Scott greeted his friend, rising to offer Warren the customary embrace - but Warren backed away. His face was stiffly polite.

"Ororo said you've come back. Permanently."

Sitting down again, Scott eyed Warren. At the other tables, chatter had quieted; Hank, Ororo and Frank observed with polite discretion while the eleven students stared unabashedly. "Yeah," Scott replied, unsure where this was going. "I told you at Christmas about some of the sh-, some of the stuff going down in the Berkeley anthro department. It got worse. I'm outta there."

Warren's head tilted, his sharp, aristocratic, falcon-features faintly derisive. "And Jean's condition had nothing to do with that decision."

All too aware of their audience, Scott glanced around the room. It was plain that Warren considered Scott's return to be a betrayal, but Scott had no idea why. "She's my friend, War. I didn't see much point in sticking around out there a few more months when she needed me here."

"_Needed_ you? She doesn't _need_ anyone but the professor. She's down in the sub-basement, mentally unglued."

"Not anymore."

_"What?"_

That came from more throats than Warren's, but it was Hank who smoothly inserted himself into the conversation. "It was reported to me earlier" - he didn't say it had been reported by Scott - "that Dr. Grey has returned to consciousness. It may yet be some time before a full recovery, but she's definitely on the mend."

"I'm going down to see her," Warren said, heading out of the hall.

"You can't!" Scott called after, standing once more. "The professor wouldn't even let me back in."

"Scott," Hank warned. "Warren - "

Both young men ignored him. "What do you mean '_back_ in'? Warren asked, swinging around, blue eyes narrow, wings slightly arched. "And why should you get in, in the first place? You're not her boyfriend."

A mixture of prudence and distracted irritation led Scott to ignore the first question in favor of the second. "I'm her _best_ friend," he said. "You're not her boyfriend, either."

At the adults' table, Ororo rolled her eyes while Hank palmed his face. The students, though, watched with open-mouthed fascination. To them, this was better than an episode of _Survivor_. "She's going out with _me_," Warren said, voice crisp.

"Not according to her," Scott replied, then immediately regretted it. It wasn't in him to publicly embarrass a friend. "Look," he began, taking a few steps closer in an effort to mend the damage, but Warren's wings snapped out to their full extension and his face warned Scott off. Warren was proud, and wouldn't bear coddling.

"At Christmas," he spat, "you told me you weren't interested."

Embarrassed, Scott glanced away. He'd forgotten all about that. "I kinda changed my mind."

"I asked in good faith! You said you weren't interested anymore!"

"Okay, I lied!" Scott snapped back. They'd almost forgotten their audience, even while being painfully aware of it. "I was . . . trying to let her go. Things changed, okay? He made another bid for a peaceful end. "Come on, man. You know I've been crazy about her forever."

"And you think I haven't?"

Warren's admission confounded Scott. He'd dismissed his friend's flirting as trivial, another of Warren's dalliances, and had been more worried about Jean's possible interest in Warren than any sincerity on Warren's part, but the expression on Warren's face now wasn't regret over a missed date. Scott took a few more steps forward, speaking in a voice he hoped only Warren could hear. "Look, War, it's mutual. I can't stop how I feel, and neither can she. I didn't realize you were actually serious about her."

And that, for Warren, was the deepest betrayal of all; it dug claws into his gut and disemboweled him. "I thought you, of all people, knew me better. I thought you were my friend. But you really _are_ plebeian, aren't you? And childish - a little boy trying to be a man. In fact, you're _eight years_ younger than Jean." He pointed to Jubilee, who sat gaping at this very public feud. "That girl is as many years younger than you, as you are younger than Jean! Never mind that you're not her equal. You think a sophisticated woman like Jean Grey wants to bring home a military brat like you?"

Equally betrayed, Scott struck back equally hard. "My father was an _officer_ and a _test pilot_ - which takes skill and talent, not just an accident of birth. This is America, Warren, not Europe. Nobody gives a fuck who your parents were or how many Roman numerals you slap after your name. As for the age thing, I hear the pot calling the kettle black - you're younger than her, too, and not by one or two years."

Warren's lips pursed. "I'm twenty-five, I have an MBA from Harvard, and I'm CEO of several companies. What are you? You can't even finish a year of grad school. You have nothing to offer her, no inheritance, and don't even qualify to teach _high school_ in the State of New York. If she's interested in you, it's because you've got a pretty face. You're her boy toy. She'll get bored eventually and go looking for a real man."

Shocked silence smothered the dining hall. Those listening instinctively understood that a friendship had just shattered beyond repair. Glancing around, face flaming, Scott muttered, "This is a stupid conversation."

"Yes, it is!" Ororo echoed, rising to intervene, but Scott had stalked out of the room. He didn't run, but when she called after him, he didn't look back, either. Furious, Ororo grabbed Warren's arm to propel him out, too. "Are you proud of yourself?" she snapped.

"I didn't tell him anything but the truth." Disinclined either to remorse or repentance, Warren's chin went up. "He got what he deserved. He stabbed me in the back!"

"Only because you turned it," Frank said without heat. He'd joined the two of them in the back hallway. "You chose not to see."

"He told me he wasn't interested! I fucking _asked_, Frank. I played by the damn rules!"

"You chose not to see," Frank said again. "It was plain to the rest of us."

"Scott _said_ he wasn't interested! You don't go back on your word!"

"You had your chance," Ororo pointed out, "but _Jean_ was not interested. Or does _her_ opinion not count? Why men think women are territories to be divvied up, I will never know. 'You take this one, I shall take that one' - and what if 'this one' and 'that one' have other ideas?"

And at the base of it, the fact that Jean _did_ have other ideas was what Warren found impossible to bear. He was always the chosen one, except to those he cared about most. To them, he was the imperfect angel, rejected, and he might have withstood the blow better, had Jean not chosen instead one of the few men he'd considered a true friend.

"As far as I'm concerned, you can all go to hell," he said now, turning and retreating back through the mansion to the garage where he'd just left his orange Lamborghini. Scott might have yielded the battlefield, but Warren now fled the theater.

Concerned, Ororo glanced at Frank, who just shook his head. "He will be back," he said. "Let his pride mend a little."

"And he and Scott?"

"They may patch things up."

"Or they may not."

"Or they may not," Frank admitted.

* * *

><p>Scott escaped first to his room only to face the unpacked boxes and (again) the rashness of his choice to leave Berkeley. Yet hadn't he brought Jean back to them? And that was more than Warren could claim - more than Warren could <em>do<em>. Still angry and distraught, Scott returned to the sub-basement. He hadn't seen the professor at supper, and half-thought to find him with Jean yet, but the occupied light was off, and the games had been removed from outside the Danger Room door. Scott hesitated only a moment before engaging the outer lock and entering the little hall. The light above the inner door wasn't on either, so he knocked.

Jean opened it and he stumbled in. Indeed Xavier wasn't there and Scott was relieved for that, but his otherwise-vivid upset battered at Jean after her long afternoon working with the professor. Her hands flew up to her temples and alarmed, Scott gripped her upper arms. "Are you okay? Do I need to get Professor Xavier?"

_No! _She replied. _You need to quit_ shouting _at me! _

"Huh?"

_Calm down, please. Calm down. You're hurting me. _

Unfortunately, he wasn't at all sure how to stop 'shouting' and aware of his confusion, she reiterated, "Please just try to calm down," then pointed. "Go sit. Over there."

He glanced across to where the little table had acquired two chairs since his last visit, and meekly obeyed her order. She'd had dinner sent down by Valeria, but had eaten only half of it, the wild rice and asparagus. Cold chicken cacciatore remained, trapped in congealed red sauce. Her tea was mostly gone, ice left to melt at the bottom of the glass, and he picked it up to shake a stray cube into his mouth, crunching it. He tried not to think about what Warren had said.

But what Warren had said was as clear as a bell to Jean - clearer, in fact, than if Scott had been projecting as he had when he'd first arrived. She stood on the other side of the Danger Room and struggled to sort through her own mixed emotions. She was seething, at Scott as much as at Warren. They'd behaved like toddlers fighting over a favorite toy and she didn't appreciate being treated like a prize - even while she was utterly amazed that she, Jean Grey, might be regarded thus by two young men who could so easily have their pick of girls. She was also irritated with them for parceling her out - 'If you don't want her, I'll take her' - though that was closer to what she'd come to expect.

Yet what Warren had said to Scott at the end upset her most of all. It'd been a less polite, less psychological version of what Xavier had told her - and it reflected what others would say behind her back, if not to her face. She wasn't sure if she were ready for that.

She approached him slowly. He had calmed down, and she no longer felt overwhelmed. Taking the other chair at the small table, she said, "First, I am not a prize in a car race, Scott Summers. I will not display a big victory cup for you while wearing a skimpy bikini."

He was still holding her tea glass, and his lips quirked up. "I know."

"Do you?" He had the good grace to blush, and took another mouthful of ice. "Second," she went on, "_I_ decide who I'll date, and I'm not dating _either_ you _or_ Warren. Understood?"

His expression was startled. "But, Jean - !"

"No, Scott. I'm not."

Ambushed, he wasn't sure how to respond to that. "But we both feel the same thing!"

"How a person feels does not necessarily determine how a person chooses to act. Do I love you? Absolutely. Do I think this is a good time to date you? No, I do not."

Mute but frowning, Scott leaned back in his chair and Jean took advantage of his silence. "Third, you are not a failure. So Warren has a degree from Harvard. You have one from Berkeley. You earned it on a scholarship, no less, which Warren did not. And you received a graduate assistantship for your masters work - which Warren also did not. We both know the reason why you didn't finish the latter, and it has nothing to do with any deficiencies on your part. I respect Warren, and he _is_ an intelligent man. But so are you, and if intelligence is measured in speed of comprehension, ability to recognize patterns and analogies, and ability to draw valid conclusions from divergent data, then you exceed him in all three areas."

Scott was blushing, but she could feel his confidence seeping back. Like her, he responded better to a rational approach than to emotional declarations, and while he might have appreciated her cheerleading, he wouldn't have believed it, and she was more interested in having him believe it.

"As for being 'plebeian'" - she sat forward in her chair - "you know Warren doesn't really buy into the myth of blue blood." Although, in fact, she wasn't so sure. Children learned what they lived, and Warren harbored his share of assumptions and prejudices just like anyone else.

"I think it rather impressive that your father was a test pilot, though I'm less impressed by how he and the rest of your family have treated _you_." When Scott started to protest, she barreled on. "It's going to take more than him showing up at your graduation for me to forgive him, Scott.

"And last, yes, there are those who'll look at your face, look at me, consider our ages, and decide you're my boy toy. All that says is they don't know you, they don't know me, and they don't understand our friendship."

She glanced away. "Besides, it's not usually the woman who loses interest. How do I know you won't get tired of your old woman in ten years and dump me for a younger model? I'll be forty and you'll be only thirty-two. Some pretty, young twenty-something might look a whole lot better than me."

Scott's sense of insult was sharp and sudden. "I'm not that fickle! And it's not about looks!"

She glanced down at herself with a wry smile. "Obviously."

"Stop it!" His affront was turning into anger. "I really hate it when you put yourself down! You're not an ugly woman, all right? And I told you - it's not about looks."

"It's not about looks, but I'm not an ugly woman? I know perfectly well what kind of image you had of me when we first met, Scott Summers. I was your own personal Venus."

His rage was pulsing now. "I can't win with you on this! You get upset if I think you're pretty and you get upset if I think you aren't! Which is it, Jean? And what the hell does any of that have to do with loving you? That's _attraction_. That's all. Attraction is what gets two people on the same playing field. It doesn't mean you finish the game. Most of the time, you don't. As for looks, how do I know you're not going to stop being interested in me when I lose my hair and get a middle-aged paunch? You have to trust that the other person really loves you, no matter what you look like."

And ashamed, Jean stared down into her lap. This, she thought, was why they were evenly matched. Sometimes she told him things; sometimes he told her.

"All right," she said softly. "I'm sorry for doubting you. I guess it's just that, for most of my life, I've been the ugly duckling."

"And you know how that story ends, don't you? Take a look at your reflection in the lake, Jean. You're a swan."

"Looks seem to matter more to men."

"Yeah? Well, we're hot-wired eyes to dick. That doesn't mean we're hot-wired eyes to heart. Sex isn't love. But when sex and love go together, it's pretty terrific."

And Jean could pick up on what he didn't say - she had him coming and going, and why did she so doubt his love that she couldn't accept his desire? Rising, she walked away a few steps, hugging her upper body again. "I want to believe," she said to him.

"So believe."

"It's hard. It may take me a while."

"I'll wait."

"I don't want that kind of power over you. If you decide you'd like to date someone else - "

"I won't. I'm _in love_ with you, dammit. Don't you get it? I'll wait. Just don't yank me around, okay? If the answer's going to be 'no,' don't string me along." She heard the unspoken addition, _like you did to Ted_. He hadn't intended to hurt her, but it hurt her anyway.

She shook her head. "I'd never do that to you. I didn't intend to do it to him. It's a definite maybe, even a probable yes - just not right now."

"Fine. I'll ask you again next week."

"Scott, I wasn't kidding when I said it'd take time. You're still so young - "

His jaw hardened. "I wasn't kidding about asking you next week, either."

"God! You are _so_ stubborn!" she said, exasperated.

But that just won a sudden, dimpled smile. "You know what Alexander the Great said to the island city of Tyre when they refused to surrender, don't you?"

Suspicious but intrigued, she asked cautiously, "No, what'd he say?"

"'You may be an island now, but I'll make you part of the mainland.' And he did. It took him ten months, but he did it."

Standing, he crossed his arms and continued to grin like a maniac. "Consider yourself under siege, Dr. Grey."

And he walked out.


	19. Besieging Tyre

The day after Jean's awakening, Elaine Grey descended on Xavier's Institute like the wrath of Demeter upon Olympus, following Persephone's capture. She and her husband John arrived at noon, and Bobby Drake had the misfortune to be the one who opened the front door. "Where's Charles?" she demanded at once, slipping past the boy with a small woman's grace, then looking about, her chin tilted and dark eyes narrow. She reminded Bobby of nothing so much as a mink, edgy and inclined to bite if approached. Her husband, a big-boned man with silver hair, followed her inside, giving a nod and half-smile to Bobby, his shoulders slumped as if making an apology in advance.

Bobby, of course, didn't know them, and asked, "Charles who?" because none of the new students was named 'Charles' and the pair in the foyer were obviously parents.

"Dr. _Xavier_," Elaine replied with a snap, turning to glare, her lips pursed slightly and one eyebrow raised. "We're here to see Charles Xavier."

"The professor is busy right now." All three turned at the new voice and approaching footsteps. Scott Summers stopped in front of the stairs, hands on hips. "Can I help you?"

"Elaine, why don't we go somewhere and wait until Charles is free," John tried to suggest, but his wife cut him off, speaking to Scott.

"Charles called us this morning. I can't imagine that he's so busy he wasn't expecting us." The words mixed humorous disdain with faint reproach. "You can help best by going to fetch him, thank you."

Her tone was one usually reserved for servants and Scott's shoulders went back, spine snapping straight with the instinctive antipathy of the working class for the country club set. "Can I tell him who you are?" he asked bluntly, as Bobby - no longer the focus - slunk away.

"We're the Greys," John interjected, setting one hand on his wife's shoulder and leaning past her to offer Scott his other. "Jean's parents. Let me guess; you must be Scott Summers. Jean's talked a lot about you."

"That's right, I'm Scott." And if he weren't so rude as to refuse the hand, he wasn't wholly reconciled and wondered what they were doing there, apparently having driven up that very morning without advance warning. Had Jean suffered a relapse in the night that he hadn't been told of?

Or maybe _they_ hadn't been told. The professor tended to play his cards close to his chest, and indeed, Scott's suspicions were confirmed when he went down to the Danger Room to inform the professor of the Greys' arrival. "Oh, God, my mother," Jean said, wrapping her arms about herself like a fence; Scott could _feel_ the anxiety radiating off of her. "Did you have to tell her, professor?"

"Well, I couldn't have put it off much longer, Jean."

"She's going to want to see me."

"Do you want to see her, is the question?" Scott said, walking over. She still appeared haunted and a little blurred about the eyes.

"No," she replied instantly.

"Then you don't have to."

"Scott, she's my mother, she -"

"You don't have to," he reiterated.

"Scott is correct," the professor told her. "In fact, in your current condition, I wouldn't advise it, and that's what I intend to tell her." Turning his chair, Xavier headed for the exit.

Jean looked at Scott in a mix of guilt and hope. "You stay here," Scott told her. "I'll go listen." And with a quick squeeze of her arm, he trotted after Xavier, attaching himself to the professor like a squire to his knight. If Jean's mother wished to treat him like a servant, then he'd assume a servant's invisibility.

It worked. No one sent him out of the professor's office, and he took up a position next to the door as Elaine got right to the point and Xavier (ever the proper host) made tea. "You told us this wouldn't happen! You said her telepathy was locked away permanently!"

"No, Elaine. I _said_ her telepathy had been locked away until she was mature enough to manage it."

"And is she?" John Grey asked.

"Yes," Xavier said. "I think she is." He turned to look at the couple seated in front of his wide oak desk. "Jean's telepathy is as much a part of her as her telekinesis. It manifested before she was ready, but she is no longer a ten-year-old girl. Even had the telepathy not remanifested, I would have removed the blocks soon. The only reason I've permitted her to keep them this long is because she was otherwise occupied with her education."

"Is she going to be all right?" Elaine asked while lighting a cigarette with nervous fingers. And if Scott would never learn to like the woman, her question and the obvious worry behind it somewhat mitigated his disgust.

"Eventually? Certainly," Xavier replied. "By tomorrow afternoon? No. Would you like sugar or milk in your tea?"

"Neither," John replied, and his wife said, "sugar only." She blew smoke, then asked, "What about her residency? If this goes on too long, she'll have wasted all those years. Jean's put too much of herself into these degrees, Charles."

"Provisions have been made for Jean's residency," Xavier said. The statement was vague, but the Greys let it go. "For now, we need to concentrate on stabilizing her."

"I want to see her," Elaine said.

Xavier gestured for Scott's assistance, handing him the teacups to deliver. Servant indeed, but he'd set himself up for it. Meekly, he took the tea to the Greys as Xavier said, "At the present time, that's unadvised. Just as before, Elaine, Jean needs to remain isolated until she's stabilized."

"I'm her mother."

"You're not a telepath. You have no shielding ability."

"I'm her _mother_."

"Elaine - "

"Charles, this is my _baby_!"

"Elaine, please." Xavier stared her down until finally she glanced away, contravened but not cowed. "As soon as Jean is ready for visitors, you'll be notified." And that was that.

And if Scott were relieved to see the shrew sent packing, a part of him still felt empathic disquiet. Just two days ago, that had been _him_ begging admittance, and the fact he'd won it owed more to his usefulness than to any sympathy on Xavier's part. Xavier did what he thought best for Jean - not for Elaine, nor for Scott himself. When Scott had come back to the mansion, he'd come out of his own neediness, but in this situation, Jean's needs mattered most. And that, Scott thought, was the difference between maturity and childishness, the ability to think beyond one's own self.

But Xavier hadn't, originally, believed Scott had anything to offer, and if Scott hadn't argued his case, he'd never have been admitted and Jean might still be lost in a swamp of others' impressions. Scott had been so accustomed to thinking of the professor as the man with all the answers, all the contacts, and all the experience, he'd forgotten Xavier was still a _man_. Like anyone else, he made decisions based on opinions; and however wise he might be, he wasn't infallible. There was a difference between trusting and following blindly; understanding that, too, was maturity.

* * *

><p>"He's going to be a <em>teacher<em>?"

A verbal pinprick, whispered rapidly and barely caught, as Scott paced down the hall towards the new classroom-cum-arboretum to face eleven students spread across the equivalent of five different mathematical classes. And how, he wondered, was he to teach something like _that_? He was reminded of one-room schoolhouses in the Old West, and hadn't one of his ancestors been a marshal? But his own preparation had been geared towards modern classes of apathetic teenagers bored by the mere idea of inequalities and absolute value, and since - by his senior year - he'd elected to enter graduate school in something else, he'd never taken a teaching practicum. In short, his only real experience in a classroom had been as a student, and a one-and-a-half semester's stint as a glorified paper grader.

"Good afternoon," he said now as he entered. Eleven sets of eyes swiveled towards him, glinting with skepticism, amusement, and perhaps a bit of derision. Who was he trying to fool?

Unsettled by their doubtful expressions, he turned to the mobile chalkboard and began dividing it up into five sections to scribble down assignments, then stopped. This was just untenable. With a sigh, he glanced back at the room. Three were in the equivalent of Algebra I, which the State of New York called "Integrated Math I" - just to be complicated - another four were in "Integrated Math II" (Algebra II and basic geometry), and two more were ready for trigonometry. Of the remaining students, one (Jubilee) was in algebra prep and another (Skids) was in remedial math, still learning the basics of multiplication and division.

Xavier had told him they were used to splitting up, so he sent Jubilee and Skids to the library where they could work in peace until he could tutor them one-on-one. Then he moved around the room between the other three groups, explaining something, giving them practice equations, and going on to the next group. But if he were working with one set, he wasn't available to answer questions from another, and between the three larger groups, he couldn't find time to break away to answer questions for the two in the library. When he finally did get down there, he found his final two students doodling on notebooks in boredom. Apologizing, he sat down at Jubilee's table. Eying him, she popped her pink bubble gum and sagely offered, "The professor manages, and he's in a wheelchair."

"Well, I'm not the professor."

Triumphant, she grinned. "Yeah, I know."

Unsure how to respond to that, he said only, "Get rid of the chewing gum in the library." And they went to work.

By supper, he was exhausted and depressed, and didn't want to visit Jean in such a dark mood. Frank found him brooding on a couch in the den. "So," the Italian began, seating himself in an armchair across from Scott, who was sprawled inelegantly on the sofa seat.

"So - I suck as a teacher."

Frank's expression was dubious. "What is the problem?"

"I can't be in five place places at once?"

"Ah - so be in five places at different times."

The initial answer was a snort. "Very funny."

"I was serious."

"That's what I _tried_. I divided up the class just like Xavier said, but they get bored waiting, or can't do the work because they have a question and I'm not available to answer."

Frank waved a hand. "No, no. I don't mean five in one session; I mean to teach maths not just in the afternoons. The school, it has gone from five to eleven this very year. I believe that even the professor is becoming strained, and the numbers will only increase. It is time to think anew, no?"

Scott scratched his chin. One didn't have to be Nostradamus to predict that the school would just get bigger, compounding the problem. "You mean it's time to divide up by age?"

"Or at least into older and younger. There are three of you now, to teach - you, Hank and the professor. So have Hank take the youngers in the mornings for the English and humanities, and you take the elders for the maths and sciences. Then reverse after lunch. The professor can teach them the ethics last, when he is completed with Jean for the day."

"How did a guy who's two years younger than me get to be smarter than me?"

Frank just smiled. "You are the maths one. What is it they say about 'inertia'?"

Then they were silent a while until Scott said, "The other problem is that they don't take me seriously."

Frank just raised an eyebrow.

"Oh, come on - look at me, Frank! I'm not much older than them! Bobby still calls me 'Scott' in class."

"And you would rather him to call you 'Mr. Summers'?" Frank seemed amused.

"I'm not comfortable with that, either," Scott allowed, then looked down at himself. He was wearing nice jeans and a polo shirt. It wasn't, he thought, very professional. "I look like a college student. I need some new clothes."

"The clothes make the man?"

"Well, they damn sure don't hurt." Yet he couldn't go clothes shopping alone. EJ had helped him in the past, but EJ was in California and Scott just looked at Frank, too proud to ask directly for assistance with something as simple as telling green from blue.

Fortunately, Frank had known him a long time, and now rolled his eyes. "_Basta chiesta, cafone impertinente!" __Just ask, idiot.  
><em>

"Can you go to the mall with me?"

"Of course." And grinning, he stood. "We should take the Aston Martin. Shall I drive?"

"When hell freezes over," Scott replied. "But yeah, lets take the Aston Martin."

It had been a long time since the two of them had gone somewhere together, and their friendship had grown stretched and transparent across a continental divide. Now they remembered it over fast cars, limp food-court fare, and a running commentary in Italian about the charms of the women they passed in the mall. "It is the whole shape," Frank said, illustrating with his hands. "Americans look too much at the _parts_. Only in America would you find a restaurant called 'Hooters.' Philistines. All of you."

"Only in Italy," Scott returned, "would newscasters bend over to show their cleavage to the camera. Don't try to tell me Italians don't sell stuff on sex, Francesco!"

"I never said that. But it is all about taste, no? Fast food, bad beer, and infomercials. That is America! Oh, and sieges." He eyed Scott with humor and made one of his grand Italian gestures. "You _court_ a woman, _mi amico_. You do not lay siege to her."

"So you've said." Had said it several times, in fact, when Scott had first told him about his determination to win Jean Grey.

"There is a bet on, you know."

Incredulous, Scott glanced over. "A _bet_? About what?"

"What do you think? How soon she will say 'yes,' of course! And I do not mean to the date." His grin was impish. "The date is a foregone conclusion."

"Where the hell do they get off, making bets on my love life?" Scott asked aloud, but was secretly pleased by the apparent confidence of the others in his eventual success.

"Well," Frank replied, "you were rather vocal about it in the dining hall yourself, no?"

It took him a moment, before he remembered: the fight with Warren, to which almost everyone in the mansion had been a witness. At the time, he'd been too distraught to be properly embarrassed, but now he felt the blood scald his neck and ears. "So we're gossip fodder, huh?"

"_Oh, sì, altro che!" __Absolutely. _

Sometime later, in the men's section of Nordstrom's, Scott admitted, "Man, it's been too long since we just hung out. I don't even know what you're planning to do after you graduate."

"International law," Frank replied, checking a shirt against a pair of slacks that Scott had already bought. Summers was a deliberate shopper rather than an adventuresome one, Frank had discovered, with a mental list of what he wanted that he stuck to, much to the exasperation of his more spontaneous Italian companion.

"No," Scott said now - to the shirt, not the career choice. "Too loud."

Frank just eyed him and put the shirt back. "Since when is Façonnable too loud? It is _color_. Everything you have is _no color_."

"I've _got_ stuff like that, Frank. I want clothes that are a little more . . . staid."

"Fusty."

"Professional."

"Unexciting."

"Why international law?"

Frank shrugged and let Summers change the subject. "It will be needed."

And there he went, Scott thought, shifting from fashion-conscious young Italian to far-seeing Apollo in the blink of an eye. "That vision you had was a long time ago, Frank."

Francesco only nodded. Most people, he had learned, had a short attention span. In some ways, that made it easier for him. For two years, Francesco Placido had been working quietly towards the fruition of the only bulwark he'd foreseen that could halt Armageddon. But perhaps, he thought, it was time to remind them. "Nothing has changed," he said softly under high, bright ceiling lights amid shelves crowded with shirts and trousers and ties like nooses.

Summers shook his head. "I haven't found that people much care. For my last two years at Berkeley, pretty much everybody I knew, knew I was a mutant, including some of my professors. Okay, sure, a couple were nervous at first, but they got over it."

"That was Berkeley. And they knew _you_."

"Fair enough. Still."

Frank considered a moment, then turned to a rack of patched wool shirts. "Something will change. I cannot say what, or why. This country is like an open camp now, at ease, confident - but in five years, it will not be. Threats real and imagined will create paranoia."

Frowning, Summers came up beside Placido and set a hand on his shoulder, turning him until they were face-to-face. "What's going to happen, Frank?"

"I do not know. Something. Something big. The sky will be black for days and your country will learn fear. Europe will be safer for mutants than America, land of the free."

"Is there some way to stop it?"

"I think . . . no. But only time will tell." His smile was wry, but he didn't look Scott in the face. "Even the smallest change might avert the avalanche, but for now? No. It bears down on us."

"How soon?"

"I do not know. But soon. It will change everything, and they will fear us. You and the rest can teach them not to fear. Maybe. It is the only answer that I have seen."

Scott had forgotten how disconcerting Francesco could be, and swallowed. He also didn't miss the fact that Frank hadn't included himself in 'the rest.' "So what can we do?"

"The same thing you set out to do two years ago - be ready."

"You make it sound like I'm the lynchpin or something."

Frank glanced up at him finally. "You are. You will lead them."

Scott snorted and turned away. But he didn't stop thinking about Frank's warnings.

* * *

><p>Jean was reclining on her bed, reading by the light of an end-table lamp, when the knock came on the Danger Room door. It surprised her so much, she dropped her book and sat up with a gasp, grabbing for her robe.<p>

Three days after returning to herself from the morass of her madness, Xavier had decided that there was no reason for her to be uncomfortable, and had transformed one corner of the DR into a makeshift bedroom complete with a twin-sized bed, end table, small dresser, desk, her computer, and even some knickknacks that Scott had brought down, among them her stuffed, spotted white snow leopard. Other children had cuddled teddy bears or fluffy cats, bunnies or beanbag dogs. Jean had cuddled a snow leopard named Ralph. Ralph had gone with her to the sanitarium, to her dorm at Columbia, her apartment, the institute, and now, the Danger Room. Despite occasional appearances to the contrary, she had a penchant for constancy in her affections.

Slipping into her robe, leopard tucked under an arm, she crossed to the door. "Who is it?"

"Just me."

Smiling, she glanced at her watch. "Hello, Just Me. Do you always call on women in their towers after midnight?"

"Only if they let down their hair, Rapunzel."

"Sorry. Chopped all mine off."

"Darn. I guess I'll just have to find some convenient dynamite to blast my way in. Or, oops, I kinda come equipped with my own."

Smiling wider, she unlatched the door so he could enter. She hadn't realized until she'd heard his voice how disappointed she'd been when he hadn't shown up after supper like he usually did, and now as he entered, the warmth of his mind filled her up. It wasn't about touch. She didn't need his touch to be touched by him and usually did her best to keep him at arm's length. If she let him touch her with his hands like he touched her with his thoughts, she'd be lost.

Moving back a step, she hugged the leopard to her breasts, regretting her half-clothed state even as he noticed it. Color suffused his cheeks, but not from embarrassment. He wanted her. She felt it bright in him, intent. How long did she really think she could hold out against the force of that? "I missed you," she whispered.

"Sorry. I should have called down before we left."

"It's okay. Where'd you go?"

Grinning, he held out his arms. "What d'you think? I just finished doing laundry for my new duds." She redirected her attention to what he was wearing, and felt her eyebrows go up. "Do I look like a prep school math teacher?" he asked.

"You look like you robbed a _Land's End_ catalogue." He almost pouted and she struggled not to laugh, but then picked up, seeping from the edges of his mind, scattered memories of his awful afternoon. That removed her amusement. "Oh, Scott - you don't have to be somebody else to make them listen to you. Just be yourself. You're a great teacher."

"Like hell." He turned away, his embarrassed pain stabbing at her.

"It was your _first class_. Of course there were bumps." She studied his back. "Come on," she said and headed back to her little 'room,' where she took a seat on her bed, her leopard still clutched to her chest. He followed, slowly, feet dragging, and plopped down in the chair she pointed to. "I never did tell you about my first night on call, did I?"

They hadn't been talking much at that point; she'd told Warren but not Scott. "We had an MVA about eight in the evening - young couple in a pickup truck. The man had been driving and was hurt pretty badly, but his wife was only banged up. Still, she had his blood all over the front of her shirt and looked frightful. They brought them in, put the husband in Trauma Room A, and her in an exam room with me, and as you can imagine, she was just frantic."

Scott had leaned over to listen, hands clasped between his knees, lamplight falling soft on his serious expression and the shiny red of his glasses. Clearly, he expected some tragic tale.

"Well, I couldn't keep the wife on the exam bed so I could give her an exam. She kept hopping off and running out into the hall, to hear what was going on in Trauma." Scott's serious expression had begun to crack. Just a little. There was the tiniest tug at the corner of his mouth.

"ER was full that night so we didn't have spare nurses, and here I was, almost six feet tall, but I couldn't keep this little thing from getting away from me. I swear, she was Mighty Mouse!"

The tug turned into a grin

"_Then_," Jean went on, "she ran _right out_ into the waiting room - still wearing those bloody clothes! I don't know what she thought she was doing - looking for her mother, she said. But it was nuts. I felt more like an air traffic controller than a physician!"

And that succeeded in startling a laugh out of him.

"I thought I was an utter failure. But I found out later from the nurses that it _was_ a crazy situation, and I was just inexperienced, not incompetent. No doubt someone with more familiarity could have controlled her better, but it was the situation - not me." She eyed him. "It's the situation, Scott. You teach just fine and you know it. How long have you been tutoring?"

"That's not in front of a classroom -"

"Phoo!" She flicked her fingers away from her, dismissing his objection. "I've seen you on stage. You're an excellent front man, and I also know you're a good math tutor. But Scott, a person just can't teach five classes at once!"

"The professor can."

"The _professor_ is _telepathic_. He can carry on two different conversations at once - or did you forget that?"

Scott sat up a little. "Oh. Yeah," he said.

"Oh, yeah," she echoed, then winked. "As for the clothes, they're very New England, Mr. Summers. But you already looked like a math teacher to me."

He glanced down at himself, pinching the fabric of the oxford. "At least they make me seem a bit more . . . professional." _And older_, she heard him think, but not say aloud. And it was true. No longer so indisputably ephebic, he could have passed for his middle twenties. She rather liked that, and felt guilty for liking it.

* * *

><p>The next evening, two days after he'd begun teaching and a week after she'd come back to herself, Scott arrived in the sub-basement for their usual evening visit after supper, guitar case tow. She let him in and he leaned up against the wall, head back against the metal, case propped in front of him and forearms crossed over the headstock, watching her. She could feel his gaze, even if she couldn't see it. "What?" she asked, mildly irritated by the force of his regard.<p>

"Go out with me."

She rolled her eyes. "I told you no already."

"And I told you I'd ask in a week."

"Fine, you asked. The answer is still 'no,' and it will continue to be 'no.'"

"For how long?"

Embarrassed, she looked away. "A while." But even as she said it, she doubted. It was easy to make declarations, harder to keep them - especially when she clung so to his company. He was her rock, her redwood, her friend. She needed him. She wanted him, too, and she was reminded of Clarice's reproach, two months prior. What game was she playing, and when would it end? "A while, but not forever," she amended now. "I just . . . You're _twenty-two_, Scott."

His face turned bitter. "And when I'm twenty-three, I'll magically cease to be jailbait?"

"You're not _jailbait_ now - "

"Then stop acting like I am."

"It's not that simple - "

"Yes it is! Why do you make such a big fucking deal out of it? I know how you feel. You know I know. And you know how _I _feel! This is stupid! What are you waiting for?"

And he'd stalked back out of the room, would probably have slammed the door if the pneumatics had permitted it. She'd hugged herself and leaned into the wall where he'd been, wondering if he'd punish her by not returning, but the next day, there he was as usual, with his guitar. He sang her Simon and Garfunkle's "Bridge Over Troubled Waters" as a veiled apology and they both acted as if nothing untoward had happened.

_When you're down and out, when you're on the street,_  
><em>When evening falls so hard, I will comfort you.<em>_  
>I'll take your part, when darkness comes,<em>  
><em>And pain is all around,<em>  
><em>Like a bridge over troubled waters, I will lay me down ...<em>

He was, once again, just her friend. But his parting question of the night before echoed silently between them. What _was_she waiting for?

* * *

><p><em>Please come down to the sub-basement when you have a moment<em>, echoed through Scott's skull, halting his explanation of fractions in mid-sentence. _Jean has something to show you. _It was the professor's telepathic voice, and Scott shook his head a little, mumbled, "Sorry," to the class of younger students, and tried to remember where he'd been.

As per Frank's sensible suggestion, seconded by Jean, Scott and Henry had split up the school enrollment; it made teaching less of a trial, even if it lengthened Scott's day. He supposed he should get used to it: this was what he'd be doing for the rest of his life, or at least the next several years. The thought was sobering, and the road to his future no longer stretched into a horizon of potential, or even an adventure of ancient sites and romantic digs (and grant proposals and academic papers given before fractious colleagues). He was a high school math teacher, and that was that. There were worse fates, he supposed, and part of growing up was learning that sometimes one had to settle. He wouldn't have done anything differently in the choices that had led him here, so regrets seemed hypocritical.

When he released his students for lunch, he headed below. The steel halls were empty, and his steps echoed. The professor must still be in the Danger Room with Jean, he thought. Every time Scott saw her, she seemed stronger, more centered, more like the woman he remembered. Given how psychotic she'd been when he'd first seen her two weeks before, her recovery was nothing short of remarkable, and the only reason she'd remained isolated in the sub-basement had been her inability to fully shield.

But now when Scott keyed the door to the Danger Room and entered, he felt nothing, or at least, no sudden fire-rush of Jean's thoughts into his like he'd come to expect. It was as if he faced . . . anyone . . . and he was struck by relief for her, and sadness, for himself. He missed her touch.

Except, except . . . There was still a small warmth, a feather brush. She wasn't entirely gone.

He smiled at her. "Wow," he said. "Shields. You did it."

But her face showed irritation rather than triumph, and both hands were raised to her temples as she sat on her bed. Scott glanced to Xavier, seated not far away. He, too, was frowning. "I can't do it!" she said, voice angry. "I can still . . . _feel_ him."

"Like a tickle," Scott agreed. "Yeah, I feel it, too." _I like it,_ he sent to her privately.

She looked up at him. "It shouldn't be there!" she said aloud.

And Xavier sighed, their words only confirming what he'd suspected for two weeks but had hoped was an exaggerated misgiving. "I fear what the two of you sense is a permanent bond."

"A . . . what?" Scott asked, not liking how Xavier had phrased that.

Jean seemed merely stunned. "But I didn't mean to - "

"Of course not," Xavier interrupted, though in truth, he thought a subconscious part of her _had_ meant to. "Nonetheless, it exists - the residue of that first encounter when Scott returned, I suspect. Apparently, you established it while using Scott's memories to rediscover yourself."

Jean looked at Scott. Scott looked at Jean. Both wanted it, and were afraid to admit it, yet both also feared it. They said nothing for several long minutes and Xavier watched the play of emotions across their faces, not needing to read their minds to follow the spiral of their thoughts. "It can be broken," Xavier said - offered really.

"No," Scott answered on the instant, then stuttered, "Ah, well, I mean - what does it do? Shouldn't we know that first?" He couldn't look at Jean now; his face was flaming.

"It doesn't _do_ anything, Scott. It's a psychic link that connects you, allowing you to be aware of Jean's presence, and her of yours."

_We can use it to talk_, Jean sent silently into his head.

_You'll always know what I'm thinking? _

_No. I don't know what you're thinking now. But I can . . . feel you. _

_And I feel you. Do you like it? _It was an impulsive question that he regretted as soon as he asked. But he also needed an answer.

She didn't reply immediately, finally dropped her eyes. _Yes. I think . . . yes. _

_Me, too. I've gotten used to coming here, feeling your mind. I'd regret it if I didn't have that. _

_But when I get out, it'll always be between us, Scott. Every minute of every hour of every day -_

_Good. _

She sighed, exasperated. _It'd take something like the Danger Room or Cerebro to shield me. And even then - I don't think . . . Or rather, now that I consider it, I _have_ felt you in my head since the very beginning. You're never entirely gone; you're like the earth under my feet_.

He smiled faintly. _Then it wouldn't be a good idea to lose your footing, would it? _

She still didn't look at him. _This would be between us_ all the time. _Do you understand that? _

_I understand it fine. The question is - do you want it? If you don't, then let's break it. _

She did look up at him then, and something heated in her dark eyes set his belly on fire. She spoke to Xavier, not him. "I'd think we'd like to keep it."

"Very well," the professor replied, but both could tell he wasn't entirely pleased. "Shall we try the shields with someone else? Henry perhaps? Or Frank?"

"All right. With Henry or Frank," she replied, but she still wasn't looking at Xavier.

_It'll be there forever? _Scott sent to her.

_It'll be there forever. Until one of us breaks it, or one of us dies. _

And he hadn't been able to keep the stupid grin off his face, even when Xavier had sent him up to fetch someone new. It wasn't until much later, alone in his room and cut off from her, that he reconsidered the wisdom of his choice and had second thoughts. And when, two days later, Jean finally emerged from the sub-basement for limited periods in limited company, Scott got the first taste of what she meant by _constant presence_.

Oddly, though, it eased his doubts. It wasn't intrusive - more like background noise, soft, and comforting really, and if he turned his attention to it, he always knew where she was. He came to think of it as his own personal Jean compass.

"We can never play hide-and-seek together," he told her, leaning up against the jamb of the rec room door. She was pressed back against the door on the other side, as if his physical presence were a force as strong at repelling her as the link was at tying them together. They were being watched by some of the younger students, as if they were better entertainment than the movie on the TV, but they tried to pretend they didn't know, or that it didn't curtail their interaction.

_I don't think we're very good at hide-and-seek, in any case. Ro told me there's a_ bet _on_, she sent.

_Yeah, I know.  
><em>

_I cannot_ believe_ that! They're going to be waiting a damn long time to collect.  
><em>

Scott just smirked, eyes half-lidded with speculation behind his glasses. For four weeks now, he'd asked her every Sunday night to go out with him, like clockwork. And every Sunday, she'd turned him down. After the first time, he'd quit taking it so personally, had decided simply to wear her down because whatever she said, whatever she did, he was convinced her self-imposed moratorium wouldn't last out the summer, not the way their bodies drew each other with a magnet-pull. She stayed so far away because if she came any closer, they'd snap together, permanent and inseparable. Even now, pressed into the door, her hips gave her away, tilted in his direction like an invitation, and her eyes were on his mouth, not his glasses.

"I hear you've been working on one of the old motorbikes in the garage."

"Yeah. A Harley 1960 Panhead. You want to go see it?"

"Sure."

They headed out down the mansion's main hall, walking apart but their steps in unison; the banks of windows to their right gave back their reflection against the evening darkness beyond. It was late, and he knew she was tired, so he took her away from the others. She still slept in the Danger Room at night, to shore up her shields during her unconscious hours, but after a month, she was able to spend most of a day above ground, and was already agitating to return to her residency. "My sick leave won't last much longer," she said. "I'm not throwing away years of school just for _this_. I'm not that weak, dammit!" Scott understood her restlessness, and her anxiety - and her pride - but he worried. He didn't think her ready to return to the pressure cooker of residency.

In the garage, they were alone at last, but it put neither of them more at ease. He spoke too fast, using technical terms that lost her within minutes, but she wasn't listening anyway. Mechanics bored her. Instead, she watched him talk, and the light play over his hair, and the fabric of his shirt pull across broad shoulders as he pointed to this or that. At one point, she leaned in, feigning interest, just as he turned to look at her. They were so close, she could feel his breath on the skin of her face. He smelled like the beef and gravy they'd had at dinner, and she started to giggle but it died on her lips.

Time stretched. He could _feel_ her heartbeat, fast as the wings of a hummingbird where it beat against the bars of her ribcage. He bent even closer. She didn't pull away. Tilting his head ever so slightly, he let his mouth barely brush her own. His belly shook.

She jerked back, dark eyes wide. She wanted to stay; she wanted to flee, and after another second in which he grasped fully that he'd moved too fast, she gave in to the latter desire and ran from the garage. The door fell shut behind her.

"_Dammit!_" he snarled, kicking his work stool halfway across the floor.

For three days, she avoided him, and he was too embarrassed to corner her. The time for his weekly suit came and went without him making it, and the morning after, Monday, she took her first trip back to the hospital where it had all begun, the professor along, just in case. But nothing calamitous happened; her shields had grown strong, like a Tupperware lid on her thoughts, keeping them unspoilt. People who knew her asked cautiously how she was, as if afraid she might shatter, and she, ashamed, wasn't sure what to say. "Fine," she replied. "I'm fine now."

There were harder questions from the director of the residency program, but finally, her return was secured. The very next week, she'd restart rotations, and she was, she knew, very fortunate. Other residents' careers had miscarried for less, and mindful of grace, she set herself to prepare, which meant not thinking about a certain brown-haired boy with hidden eyes and a devastating smile. Besides, what medical resident had time for a love life?

So their dance of avoidance continued - quite a feat in the small company of the mansion - but the morning of her first day back, she woke at an ungodly hour, dressed, and descended to the kitchen to grab coffee . . . only to find Scott making her breakfast. She didn't really have time to eat, but was touched - Scott Summers rising before the sun to cook for her. He seemed to realize her hurry. Slapping her eggs on a bagel along with three pieces of bacon, he slipped it in a baggie and held it out. "A McSummers Muffin-Bagel. Death-by-cholesterol."

That made her smile. "Thanks." She accepted the offer and all it implied, along with a travel mug of coffee fixed with cream and sugar the way she liked it, though he'd told her often enough that she'd fallen from the True Faith, contaminating the black bean with foreign substances. Now, she gave him another smile and, impulsively, set down everything to hug him, and maybe that was a mistake but she really didn't care. He hugged her back. It was the first time they'd touched so close, body-to-body, since the day he'd returned, and something healed. He kissed her hair and let her go. He didn't need to say, "I love you." The breakfast had said that. And she didn't need to say it, either. He could read it in her eyes.

Then she was out the door, wondering to herself - yet again - what game they were playing and how much longer she could keep it up, how much longer she wanted to keep it up. Not long, she decided, and to hell with bets or what the rest thought.

* * *

><p>"Man, I am going out of my fucking <em>mind<em>!"

"Whoa, Slim-boy. Crank down the decibel level - what's the problem?"

"I love her. She loves me - "

"Sure of ourselves, aren't we?"

"It's the telepathy, okay? I'm not guessing - I _know_, dammit."

"Okay - sorry. So what's the problem?"

"She refuses to go out with me!"

"Why?"

"Because I'm twenty-fucking-two!"

There was a pause on EJ's end and Scott adjusted the phone on his shoulder as he flipped over another stack of math homework. "The age gap won't go away just for you wishing it, man," EJ said finally.

Scott turned his red pen end over end and stared out the window of the little office the professor had given him on the mansion's second floor. There were storm clouds on the horizon. "You've never really thought Jean and I were a good idea."

"I ain't gonna dictate your life. I ain't there; I don't know. I saw you guys together maybe a week."

"The professor doesn't approve, either."

"I'm sure he just wants what's best for you." And EJ was talking about himself as much as about Xavier, Scott knew. "I just don't want to see you hurt."

"I know," Scott said. "But . . . I can't explain it, Eeej. I need her; she needs me. Waiting a few more months, or even a few more _years_ - it's not going to change a damn thing. This feels . . . fated, or something."

"I don't believe in fate, Slim. But I believe in love. Maybe you just need to get her out of the mansion - go somewhere it's just the two of you, and talk."

"I tried that! She keeps saying 'no'!"

"Not on a date, dope. Just . . . meet her somewhere. Go out as friends, y'know?"

Scott thought about that, rocking his head back and forth to crack his neck. "Okay." It wasn't a bad idea.

"Just remember it's not a war, man. Love's about partnership. If it's real, then it'll happen. Let it go - trust it."

"Yeah, right."

"Always the freakin' cynic. And hey, you could always try singing to her under her window at midnight."

Scott burst out laughing. "I'll keep that in mind."

* * *

><p>May was past its midpoint. Trees had flowered, leaves were out in full, bulbs had bloomed and were dying away, and the heat had crept up towards summer temperatures on more than one afternoon. Jean wore a tan, calico-print dress under her white lab coat, and it was humid enough to make her damp beneath the arms and down her back. Her stethoscope hung at rest over the back of her neck as she headed out to the staff parking lot, another day over and she'd held herself together again. 'One day at a time,' clichéd or not, had been her motto since she'd returned to her residency two weeks before. Fortunately for her, she was doing internal med this rotation.<p>

Approaching her car, she thumbed off the alarm. It made a happy chirp and she opened the door, slipping inside. Her faithful Toyota Camry. She could have taken one of the mansion cars, but this was hers, even if it did have 76,000 miles on it, and the imprint of Scott (repaired) on the hood. Could one be accused of nostalgia about a car because of an accident?

She looked forward to dinner, and was thinking more on food than the even-slower-than-usual traffic - the drive to and from Columbia Presbyterian was made on autopilot by now - when the whole car suddenly _lurched_ forward. If not enough to give her whiplash, it was enough to make her whole body weak from the adrenaline of shock.

Glancing in her rearview mirror, she caught sight of a guy on a motorbike. "Dammit!" He'd rear-ended her, and now they were stopping traffic on the West Side Highway at rush hour. Furious, she snapped on hazard lights, opened the door (carefully) and got out as cars zipped past in the other lane. More than one honked. Stalking back along the length of her car, she opened her mouth to give the offender a piece of her mind, then stopped cold.

Scott was straddling the old Harley, grinning at her as he removed his bike helmet.

"You son of a bitch!" she screamed.

"Whoa! I didn't even dent it!" he called, pointing to her rear bumper.

She got right in his face and yelled, "What the hell do you think you're doing? You hit my car!"

"I had to get your attention somehow."

"You hit my car to get my attention?"

"It worked once before."

Jean gestured at the heavy traffic and the line of cars backed up behind Scott. A middle-aged man in a red Accord was making rude gestures at both them and the cabbie who'd just cut him off from pulling out around them. "Did it never occur to you that a _phone call_ might be better than hitting my car during rush hour?"

He shrugged, managing to look both sheepish and cocksure at once. "I wanted to surprise you at work, but I didn't get done with class until after four, and by the time I got here, you were already gone. So I chased you out to the parking lot, but you were already leaving, so I grabbed the bike . . ."

"And hit my car?"

He shrugged again. "You want to go get something to eat?"

She made fists at her sides and stamped her foot, frustrated beyond bearing. "You're impossible! I told you I wasn't going to go out with you!"

"It's not a date!" he shot back, holding up two fingers. "Just two friends. _You_ were the one who kept telling me you weren't dating Warren - it was just two friends hanging out together. Okay, fine. Just two friends - you and me. Now can we please go get something to eat? I'm starving."

She wanted to tell him to take a flying leap off the George Washington Bridge, but couldn't, quite, and if they didn't move and quit blocking the lane, they were likely to become the victims of someone's road rage. So throwing up hands she said, "Fine! 93rd and Amsterdam. East side, Purple awning. I'll meet you there." And she got back in her car, starting the engine just in time to see Scott zoom past on the bike. "Crazy bastard," she muttered, following. And smiling. Just a little.

They met at the entrance to Coffee-a-Go-Go. "Is that name for real?" he asked, thumbing up at the sign above the purple fabric over the door. "It sounds like something out of the '60s."

"It is something out of the '60s," she replied. "It used to be a local hangout for the Kerouac and Ferlinghetti wannabes. Now, it's just a diner with good coffee and cool decor." She opened the door and gestured him through. With scratched formica tables under chrome lights, (old original) lava lamps, and Dali art on the walls, the place was decidedly prosaic compared to its slickly urbane and upwardly mobile commercial neighbors, here south of 110th - a stubborn hold-out of an earlier era. Scott liked it instantly, and liked it even better when the hamburger he ordered was suitably greasy and the fries over-salted. Jean rolled her eyes. "Eating like that, you're going to die of a heart-attack before you're sixty," she warned. He grinned at her in wordless reply.

They talked of inconsequentials and Beat poetry; he confessed that he'd owned a copy of _On the Road_ since his sophomore year of college but had never actually read it. She called it "overrated." He said he wouldn't know; literary analysis wasn't his thing. She teased him about his fondness for science fiction, and he replied that he liked what he liked. They played three games of checkers while they drank a pot of coffee. He won all three. She stuck her tongue out at him.

It was eight o'clock by the time they left, exiting into the swirl of evening pedestrian traffic. They made their way north, up Amsterdam, by common, unspoken agreement. There were more shops on Broadway, but if window-shopping were their excuse, it wasn't their real interest. He slung one arm around her shoulders and she put hers about his waist in chummy fashion. The May evening air felt cool on her legs and blew his hair back from his face. He had a cowlick on one side, near the part, and she wondered why she'd never really noticed before.

No one looked at them twice. No one offered a disapproving stare. They were utterly unremarkable, one more young pair amid the human sea, and there were far more colorful fish than they.

So they walked. At 112th across from the massive, sprawling, gothic Cathedral of St. John the Divine (impressive despite the construction scaffolding), she dragged him off west in the direction of Broadway. "I want to visit Labyrinth Books. Come on; you'll love it." Obediently, he followed.

The store was cramped and plain, and most of the stock was upstairs on bookshelves of metal, not wood; there were no seats for lounging, and books had been crammed everywhere one turned - serious books, academic books. He lost himself in front of the archaeology section, thumbing through texts by Dean Snow on the Iroquois. She gravitated to the medical section, but after a while, edged back as if pulled by a magnet. He didn't look up at her, but he was aware of her; she could feel the slight shift of his mind even while he flipped through a massive coffee-table book on the Aztecs. "Utter crap," he muttered and put the book back. Pretending to study the shelves, she moved up closer until the light calico cotton dress skirt brushed the back of his hand.

An electric thrill ran all through him and he held his breath. She moved even closer, turning slightly, just so. Their fingers brushed. He moved his hand, caught her pinky with his. She didn't jerk away; instead, she slid her palm into his. He was staring at the spines of books but not seeing a one, even while he was hyperaware of everything else around them - the musty stink common to bookstores, the argument of a pair of friends a little further down the aisle, the tinkle of someone's keys and the scrape of feet as another shuffled along. For the longest time, he and Jean held as still as statues, then he moved his hand again, just a little, just enough to lace their fingers. She let him.

It was magic, scintillating and extraordinary.

He knew he was grinning like a fool but couldn't stop, and felt excited heat flush in his face. Such a small thing, such a _silly_ thing, on the face of it; he felt as if he were back in high school where walking arm in arm might be explained away, attributed to friendship - but not this, not the lacing of fingers. This was intimate. This was for going steady. They said nothing but continued to stand there, hands entwined, until finally she spoke softly. "You want to head back?"

"I guess we should."

So they went out, still holding hands, and he didn't want to break that contact, was afraid to, was afraid that if he did, even to get the door, she might not let him have her hand back - or he might not find the courage to take it. He was very glad of the long return walk, at least a mile of heaven, and passing by the front of the stone cathedral under the rose window, if he'd heard angels sing, he'd probably have believed it.

Jean was just as giddy, her world in freefall, terrifying and wonderful at once. She didn't want it to end, and kept smiling over at him. He smiled back. Somewhere around 100th street, they shifted back to strolling arm in arm, but this wasn't the same as the walk up had been, with space between their bodies and a perfunctory hold. Now his arm curled around her snugly and her fingers slid just inside the waistband of his slacks, gripping his side. He was solid against her, and it made walking difficult, but she didn't care. They simply ambled more slowly.

He took her as far as her car in the parking garage. His bike was up one floor and over. At the driver's side door, they paused and he, reluctantly, let her go, stepping back. It was all different, all changed. Just as in Oakland, or in the mansion garage a few weeks back, they stood inches apart, staring at mouths. She wondered if he'd kiss her; she wanted him to, and swayed a little nearer to brush his lips with hers in invitation.

He turned his face away. It was the last thing she'd expected, and surprised her so much, she rocked back on her heels, mouth open.

But his expression was more puckish than piqued. "I thought it was customary to get a kiss after the first _date_," he said, one corner of his mouth quirking up. "This wasn't a _date_. You made that pretty clear back on West Side Highway."

Her mouth opened wider but nothing came out. She must have looked like a beached fish.

"I'll see you back at the mansion." And turning on his heel, he strode away - or _sauntered_, really, hands in pockets. He held all the aces this time and knew it, and if she were miffed, she was also suitably chastised. She'd wanted to have her cake and eat it, too - and not deal with the calories. But that wasn't fair.

"Well, why don't you try asking me for a date!" she called after him.

Pausing, he turned to glance at her, and positively smirked. Ooo, she thought - the _arrogance_ of the man! "Maybe I will," he replied, then walked on, whistling.

It wasn't until she was halfway back to the mansion that it dawned on her that he'd been whistling the bugle charge.

She laughed.

* * *

><p><strong>Notes:<strong> Yes, Coffee-a-Go-Go is a bow to the Stan Lee days, and Jean's story of her first night on call is based on a real event. ;


	20. The Lion in Winter

**Warning: **This chapter is most assuredly adult - sexual content warning.

* * *

><p>Scott didn't ask Jean out immediately. She supposed she should have expected as much after his counting coup in the garage, but she became frustrated. And then she became irritated. And then she became downright depressed.<p>

And then she laughed at herself.

His hesitation wasn't due entirely to revenge. He wasn't above a bit of tit-for-tat - he was only human - but for all his occasional exuberance, he was still a cautious man, and he'd asked her out five times already . . . six, if one counted hitting her car and then wheedling a date that wasn't a date. The real reason Scott bided his time was that he wanted to be sure she was saying yes because she meant it - no regrets, no second thoughts.

So on Thursday night when they returned to the mansion, they behaved as if the events in Manhattan hadn't occurred; he didn't try to take her hand when they walked back into the mansion, nor did she try to take his. But they stayed up late, watching movies with the kids and sitting together on the couch, him with an arm along the couch back behind her. Sometimes, unobtrusively, he let the edge of his thumb stroke her shoulder or the skin of her neck. Sometimes, unobtrusively, she rested her hand on his knee. Every touch, no matter how trivial or brief, was electric.

Friday, she was busy all day and into the night, and Saturday, Scott was out of commission with one of his migraines. Jean thought the stress of everything probably had as much to do with it as built-up energy, and she went by his room several times to bring him Imitrex or just to sit and pat his arm. They didn't talk, even telepathically, except once when he whispered, "You don't have to stay here. You must feel it."

"I choose to," she'd replied - to both things. He'd fearlessly walked in to share her insanity. She chose now to share his pain.

So Saturday passed as well, bringing them around to Sunday - the day on which he'd always asked her out before. He got up late and she was at the hospital most of the day, not arriving home until time for supper. Scott was already in the dining hall, sitting with the others at what had come to be dubbed "the teachers' table." Even in a room full of people, her eyes naturally fastened on him, and she was old enough to be embarrassed by her own fixation. Feigning nonchalance, she slipped into the kitchen to pick up a dinner plate from Valeria, the cook. She knew Scott was watching her, and she knew it the minute he rose to come after her. She emerged back into the dining hall with a plate full of pesto chicken and a bowl of antipasto just as he caught up to her . . .

. . . only to drop to his knees in front of her and stretch out a dramatic hand. _What on earth? _she wondered.

_Whenever I see your smiling face_  
><em>I have to smile myself<em>  
><em>Because I love you<em> -  
><em>yes, I do . . .<em>

Her jaw dropped open. He was _singing_ to her! In a dining hall full of people, he was serenading her on his knees, _a capella_, with an old James Taylor song - and she glanced all around (seeking escape), struggling to sort through emotions that ranged from pure astonishment to white mortification. She wondered if she'd been caught in a bad replay of _Top Gun_.

_And when you give me that pretty little pout_  
><em>It turns me inside out.<em>  
><em>There's just something about you, baby,<em>  
><em>I don't know . . . <em>  
><em>Isn't it amazing a man like me<em>  
><em>Can feel this way? <em>  
><em>Tell me how much longer,<em>  
><em>If it grows stronger every day? <em>  
><em>Oh, how much longer?<em>

"Scott!" she hissed, finally finding her voice. "Get up!" Everyone was staring now, and some of the students (not to mention their own friends) were laughing. Bobby Drake scrambled up on a bench to shout, "Woot! Woot! Woot!"

Scott ignored him, continuing to sing with absolute sincerity (and a really enviable ability to stay in tune). Jean would have put a hand over her face to hide her flaming skin, but as she gripped a plate in one hand and her bowl in the other, such a gesture would have dumped her dinner down her front, and that would have been even less dignified.

_I thought I was in love_  
><em>A couple of times before<em>  
><em>With the girl next door,<em>  
><em>But that was long before I met you.<em>_  
>Now I'm sure that I won't forget you.<em>_  
>And I thank my lucky stars<em>  
><em>That you are who you are,<em>  
><em>And not just another lovely lady<em>  
><em>Sent down to break my heart.<em>

_Oh_, she thought, _so pointed, Scott! _But despite her humiliation, she couldn't help noticing the students' (and adults') amusement appeared to be well-intentioned. The professor, of course, wasn't present. But the rest? They were rooting for them, or at least, rooting for Scott.

And wasn't it time she quit paying attention to what everyone else thought, instead of what she felt? No, maybe Xavier didn't approve, and she knew her mother wouldn't, but she wasn't a little girl anymore. She had to make her own way, make her own decisions, fall in love and make her own mistakes. Otherwise, the victories weren't hers, either. People were so much more than the outward shell, birth dates and eye color and height - and didn't she know that intimately? Didn't she know _him_ intimately even though she'd never seen his body unclothed or his naked face? He'd bared his heart, and his mind, which was a lot more revealing. He was her friend, her companion, her conscience, and - just maybe - her fate.

_Isn't it amazing a man like me_  
><em>Can feel this way? <em>  
><em>Tell me how much longer,<em>  
><em>I can grow stronger every day.<em>  
><em>How much longer . . .<em>

"All right!" she shouted, exasperated (but more with herself than with him). And now it was his turn to appear startled. He shut up. "I'll go out with you! Just get up off the floor! You're getting your pants dirty."

And although he wore a shit-eating grin wide enough to split his face, she couldn't hear a word he said in reply because there was too much yelling and clapping in the dining hall. It reverberated off the wood paneling.

* * *

><p>"So - you mad at me?"<p>

He'd caught her a few hours later in the upstairs hallway as she was coming out of her room after an evening shower. Crossing her arms, she tried to glare and purse her lips, but it was mostly to keep herself from smiling. "You made a spectacle of us."

He didn't appear apologetic, just shrugged a bit. And in truth, she wasn't mad. Embarrassed, yes, but not angry. Scott was full of surprises, persistent, and unwilling to surrender. And cocky. He'd do whatever it took. That dogged perseverance was, in fact, part of what attracted her to him. "You'd better take me somewhere nice," she warned him.

"Oh, I will." He shot her that_ smile_ again. "When do you want to go?"

"I thought the guy was supposed to make the arrangements?" She asked it coyly and leaned back against the wall.

"Oh, come on! You're in residency. It's more like when you've got a free night. I don't care if it's on a Tuesday!"

She laughed. "I was just teasing. And actually, it's on Thursday. Again. I work all next weekend. Is Thursday okay?"

"Thursday it is."

They didn't say anything else then. Still embarrassed, she stared at a display table in the hall behind him; it sported a brass vase filled with pussy willows and wilting tiger lilies. He put his hands in his pockets and examined the interlacing pattern in the oriental runner beneath his feet. "You want to take a walk?"

She glanced back at him. "Where to?"

"I don't care - just get out of the house."

"You mean go outside? It's chilly after dark, Scott, and my hair's wet. May in New York isn't May in Berkeley."

Instantly, his face fell into lines of apprehension and the soft light of hallway lamps threw his shadow indistinct on the wall behind. His uncertainty made her smile - one minute, he was her troubadour, and the next, a shy young man. "Can you wait while I go get a sweater?"

His smile came back, but softer. He wasn't trying so hard. "Sure."

A few minutes later, they slipped out of the house to meander along the mansion's sidewalks. She'd wrapped herself in an oversized dark green sweater with a cowl neck, and he put an arm around her shoulders, ostensibly to keep her warm. They talked about the newest student, who'd arrived just the week before - Doug Ramsey, whose mutant gift was the mathematical ability to decode any kind of pattern, whether in math, language, computer programming, or puzzles. He came very close to being a living computer. Scott's mutant gift granted him some natural pattern recognition, but: "Doug leaves me in the dust. I don't know that there's anything much I can teach him, Jean. I just give him stuff and he figures it out for himself. It's like having Benoit Mandelbrot or Hermann Weyl in your class."

"Is he doing college level math already?"

"He's into the first sequence of calculus _now_. At _thirteen_. He thinks it's a game. And he speaks sixteen languages . . . so far. Fluently. That doesn't count the computer languages or ASL. And he asked the professor if he could start Sanskrit, for God's sake. He said, 'It might actually be a challenge.' What the hell are we going to _do_ with this kid? Normally, we have to worry about catching them up. In Doug's case, we have to worry about keeping up! Even Hank has his hands full."

"He still has to learn social skills, Scott. There's more to high school than classes." Her expression was rueful. "I should know. And Hank, too. Maybe you should try talking to his mom. She found things to keep Hank busy."

It wasn't, Scott thought, a bad idea. If anyone knew how to raise a genius as a thoroughly decent human being, it was Edna McCoy.

Some distance from the mansion, they stopped by silent agreement under a maple tree. She turned to face him and without debate, without agonizing, raised both her hands to cup his face, thumbs brushing his cheeks just below the glasses. They bent towards one another at the same moment, lips met, opened, eased into the quickness of tongues behind. This wasn't stolen, or orchestrated. They kissed like old lovers, easily, and like new ones, passionately. After a minute, he wrapped her up in his arms and held her tight. His body flashed hot all over and he wanted to feel her against him, wanted to peel her back and climb inside. Without thinking, he pushed her up against the maple trunk until the bark rubbed rough on her sweater and caught in her hair. She ignored it, hooking one of her legs around his hip to pull his groin to hers even as she felt out the contours of his mind as easily as she did his body. Fierce, she dragged blunt nails down his thin shirt and pulled him into her thoughts, and this time, he didn't resist being swallowed. His own hands moved up and down her sides from the swell of her hips to the smaller swell of her breasts, and when he pressed thumbs over her nipples she bit his lower lip, tasting blood. His erection was hard like wood, and warm against her lower belly. He was panting, drunk on her touch and the kiss he'd waited five years to get, and she'd stopped thinking of much beyond his neck and jawline and mouth, and cock. She'd never felt this level of abandon with anyone, even Ted, and she might have blamed it on her telepathy but couldn't. She knew she'd been waiting on Scott as much as he'd been waiting on her, even if she hadn't quite realized it, or been willing to admit it. He was her ground of being.

They spent some time necking under the maple tree, confident in the concealment of shadows and the hour, and unaware that they were being watched from a third story window by a man in a wheelchair. It wasn't that Charles' Xavier's eyesight excelled, or that he was inclined to snoop, but their combined joy (among other things) was hard to miss psychically. They flared as bright as Chinese fireworks in the twining of their minds and their lust. He sighed. They'd been headed in this direction ever since they'd joined in the Danger Room, or really, since sometime last fall. It had been inevitable, like death and taxes, and he'd been steeling himself for it even while he'd tried to avert it. But done was done, and he'd say no more. They might be the children of his heart, but they were not children, however young they might seem to him.

Sighing again, he set aside his book and wheeled himself downstairs to get tea, and when he ran into the two of them in the main hall later, sneaking back in the door like teenagers caught out past curfew - hands joined, hair mussed and lips bruised - Jean squeaked and Scott began stammering a very lame explanation.

"Enough," he told them quietly. "You know how I feel about this, but it is your choice to make. I'm not going to punish you. Come now, should I _ground_you both for a week?" They managed to look as amused as they were sheepish. He wheeled past, adding as he went, "Jean, you might want to find a high-necked blouse for tomorrow."

* * *

><p>There were still moments when Jean wasn't sure if a memory belonged to her, or to someone else.<p>

She could vividly recall an afternoon in the kitchen when she'd lectured Valeria on how to make the perfect flan by placing eggshells in the boiling water outside the flan cup - and all of the others had stared at her in shock, until Scott had said quietly, "Jean, you can't cook. You burn water."

But she knew how to cook - now. She knew how to do all kinds of things now. Yet, she wondered, did she have a right to those memories when she hadn't lived them? She might _know_ how to make a perfect flan, but would she actually be able to do it? The memory lived in her head, but not in her hands. How much of knowledge was the purview of the intellect, and how much belonged to the existential? When Scott had kissed her last night, had he kissed a sheltered young academic, or a cynical old New Orleans whore? Or a hundred other people in between? It troubled her, and all Monday morning, her concentration was off. She'd been working with a patient suffering from insulin resistance, and another with chronic Hepatitis B. She adored the problem-solving aspect of internal medicine, and so far, had excelled in this rotation. But that morning, the chief resident called her aside to - humorously - dig through her hair. "What are you doing!" She'd jerked away. "Looking for lice?"

He'd grinned. "Looking for the blonde roots. What's up with you today?"

Rolling her eyes, she said, defensively, "Nothing! I'm just . . . a little off. I'll be fine, Alan."

He eyed her seriously. "You okay?"

She knew to what he referred. It seemed as if the entire hospital had heard about her breakdown in the ER in March. "I'm _fine_. It has nothing to do with that."

"Then what is it? You're out orbiting Mars today."

"It's _nothing." _

He snorted. "In a pig's eye. Well, get it together." She nodded as he walked off, and took a deep breath, returning to her slides.

Jean wasn't the only one unable to concentrate. Scott made three mistakes in equations on the board and once, his train of thought completely derailed in the middle of a lecture. The students laughed. They, at least, had a slightly better idea of what had him so discombobulated. "Where are you going to take her, Mr. Summers?" Jubilee asked boldly.

"Where I'm taking Dr. Grey to dinner is my business. Yours is pre-algebra homework." It came out a bit more harshly than he'd meant it.

"_Don't_ tell me you're doing _dinner and a movie_?" Skids asked.

"What's wrong with dinner and a movie?"

"That is, like, _so_ lame!" Jubilee pronounced.

Scott blew out lightly and rolled his eyes behind his glasses, reminding himself that they were teenagers, and if he weren't so much older than they, in that moment, he felt the difference keenly. "Can we get back to _math_?"

What was wrong with dinner and a movie anyway, he wondered?

* * *

><p>Jean had shift until eleven, and was taking her dinner in the noisy cafeteria, so lost in thought that she didn't see Barb Clark approach her small table until the other woman actually sat down. "Earth to Jean," Barb said, waving a hand in front of Jean's nose. It made Jean start, then smile.<p>

When they were both on shift, they ate together, and sometimes they met for drinks afterwards if the day had been long, and Jean began to think that - with remarkably little fanfare - she'd finally found a friend of the same sex. It was a new experience for her. She'd always gotten along better with men and had thought the whole notion of 'sisterhood' rather 1970s, yet as much as she loved the men in her life, she also found interacting with them to be intimidating. Men fascinated and frightened her both, and ever since her telepathy had returned, she'd become increasingly conscious of her own approach-and-repel attitude towards them.

When she'd woken from her confusion, she'd been touched to learn that Barb had gone to the trouble to call the mansion, to ask after her, and Jean had called her back as soon as she'd been emotionally able. Barb had been solicitous, too, ever since Jean's return to Columbia Presbyterian, in a way that was present, but not pushy. They'd never discussed precisely what had happened, but Jean was unsure where to begin, or what Barb would think if she knew the truth. "So what's up?" Barb asked now as she salted her corn. For a physician who should know better, she had remarkably poor eating habits.

"I have a date for Thursday night."

Barb's eyebrows rose but her grin was honest. "Mr. Cowboy Hat finally wore you down, eh?"

Laughing and self-conscious, Jean made a prevaricating gesture. "He _sang_ to me."

"What?" Barb dropped her fork and leaned across the table. "Spill!"

So Jean told her what had happened on Sunday evening as Barb pressed for details, asking what she planned to wear and where he was taking her, and Jean was (embarrassingly) delighted to be engaged in the kind of social gossip she'd missed in high school. "So when do I get to meet him?" Barb finished.

Jean shrugged, suddenly unsure. It wasn't that she doubted Barb's acceptance of Scott's age. This time, it was Scott's more obvious mutancy she worried about. The mutant issue was another thing they'd never discussed, although Barb knew it was the subject of Jean's research. Neither had avoided it; it simply hadn't come up in a context beyond the casual academic reference: "I'm working on a paper about . . ." Jean had no real reason to think Barb would be biased, but no reason to think she wouldn't be, either, and for the first time, she fully understood Scott's reluctance, three years ago, to tell EJ the whole truth.

"Come on," Barb said now. "You've met Randy. You can't keep yours hidden forever."

"I'm not hiding him." Jean gave a small, private smile. It seemed to slip onto her face naturally of late, any time she spoke of him.

"You are _so_smitten," Barb said, sipping coffee. She seemed amused.

* * *

><p>"So - dinner and a movie? Is that okay?"<p>

Scott had still been up when she'd arrived home from the hospital after midnight, and now they were in the kitchen. She made tea while he watched, leaning up against the fridge door, hands in his pockets, trying to seem casual but failing. "Dinner and a movie is fine," she said. "Do you want any tea?"

"No, thanks. You're sure?"

She smiled at him sidewise. "Yes, Scott. Really. It's fine. You worry too much."

He shrugged, and, reaching out, she slipped an arm through his until he relaxed finally, pulling her in to wrap her up, her back against his side and his face buried in her hair. They stood that way, unspeaking, until the tea kettle sang.

* * *

><p><em>This is a <strong>date<strong>, a real **date**_, Scott Summers told himself as he tried to avoid cutting his chin with a razor. He was going out with Jean Grey. After five years of waiting, he was finally going out with Jean Grey.

His hands shook and his brain occasionally detoured into a youthful Neverland of what he wished could be, and he wound up cutting himself three times anyway, each a bright sting of pain like a stainless steel admonishment. Finally, he dropped the razor into the sudsy water with a plop, and leaned over to brace palms on cool porcelain. "Get a grip, Summers."

At ten to seven, he was pacing, all nervous, in the wood-paneled den: over to the pool table, around the Ficus tree, across the Persian runner in front of the door, past the black leather couch, and back to the pool table. Francesco Placido, who was inelegantly sprawled over a florid-red Queen Anne seat, quit reading to watch him. "Chill out, Scott," he said.

Scott paused, and smiled. "I'm having déjà-vu." Frank smiled back, and Scott walked over to plop down on the couch. "Did you know?" he asked. "Five years ago?"

Frank's eyebrows went up in a silent question.

"When I took her to see _Phantom_, on Broadway, did you know then?"

Frank's confusion became amusement. "There are many futures - "

"Oh, cut the _Twilight Zone_ lines, Frank. Just answer the goddamn question."

Frank laughed. "Yes, I knew it was likely." Then he dug in his back pocket for his wallet, pulled it free and fished inside, handing Scott a foil package. "You did not take this last time."

Grinning, Scott accepted, more to acknowledge the gesture than because he thought he was likely to need it.

When Jean finally appeared, Scott met her in the doorway. "Nice," she said, patting the lapel of his leather jacket. "I hope I'm not under-dressed." She indicated her black shirt and khaki pants. "I figured, just for a movie - "

"You're fine," he interrupted, kissing her cheek and wondering why she was worried. Jean had a gift for making anything elegant. "I like your hair, and" - he touched one of the rhinestone hoops - "when did you get your ears pierced?"

She pulled the earring off and held it up. "Clips."

"Oh." And it struck him how very different this time was than five years ago when he'd been a stuttering wreck, almost afraid to touch her. Now, they were discussing her fashion accessories. "You look beautiful."

"You're a flatterer," she replied, but blushed all the same, having spent an hour in the bathroom, and perhaps that was excessive when he'd seen her at her worst not long ago, but she'd wanted to be pretty for him tonight. For all her fierce attachment to her adult independence, her childhood programming of pink ruffles, Mary Janes, and Barbie dolls left her wanting to be the envy of other women. At least once in a while.

"Come on, let's get out of here," he said, and with a hand at the small of her back, ushered her down the hall towards the garage.

They took the Mercedes, because it was her favorite, and she drove, because he was pretending to be blind. It was a subterfuge EJ had invented, back at Berkeley, to keep people from staring at the guy wearing shades in a dark movie theater. Scott even had a red-tipped cane, and was good at the counterfeit after years of practice, but for dinner, he didn't use it. They ate at The Auberge Maxime, the priciest place in their region of Westchester but worth it for the ambiance, like a Provençal cottage crossed with a fairy tale. They meandered through extensive gardens while they waited for their table. (Even with reservations, it took half an hour.) He got a kiss under the willow, and it was sweeter, he thought, than the scent of white moonflowers wrapped around garden trellises. The maître 'd seated them outside on the terrace, and the waitress had to come back twice because they both kept forgetting to look at the menu, being so engrossed in looking at each other. The second time, at the woman's rolled-eyes, Jean said, "I think we'd better pick something," and turned her attention to the faux-leather _carte du jour_.

"Do you read French?" he asked.

"A little."

"Then you order, because I haven't got a fucking clue what half this stuff is."

She laughed, but she ordered. He got roast duck fillet with apples and Porto sauce. "People eat this?" he asked. "Quack, quack."

"Philistine." She kicked him under the table.

It was, he admitted later, very good, and a little tipsy on the wine, they walked around the gardens again after eating and didn't seek the concealment of willow branches to exchange kisses. "You taste like peppered duck," she told him, laughing. He chased her out to the car, and she drove them to the White Plains Rose Theater. Constructed in a 1920s art nouveau architectural style, it specialized these days in classics, and was open only on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, catering to local film connoisseurs. Scott had chosen it less for the film (Peter O'Toole and Katharine Hepburn in _The Lion in Winter_) and more for the fact that there wouldn't be much of a crowd on Thursday, and he could neck with Jean in a back row. He was right about the lack of a crowd, but not about the necking.

"I _love_ Katharine Hepburn!" she said in delight, clapping her hands together when she discovered what film he'd chosen. "How did you know?"

He hadn't, but he smiled enigmatically, and she made them sit near the front, not in back. He had to watch the film because she wanted to. She did, at least, let him put an arm around her, and rested her head on his shoulder.

Jean had ulterior motives for dragging Scott to the front of the theater, and they didn't owe to Katharine Hepburn. She knew very well what he wanted, could feel it in him, the press of desire. It had been like this ever since Sunday night. Whenever they were together, he became urgently physical, and if half of her reveled in it, the other half feared it. Just like every other man she'd ever dated, Scott wanted sex, but she wasn't too sure what to think of that because, this time, she wanted it almost as much. Her own lust scared her.

Based on a play, the film was unusually long and midnight had passed by the time the theater emptied. Jean was aware of second glances as she led her "blind" boyfriend through the antique lobby, his cane tap-tapping in front of them, but she sensed only curiosity in the minds around them, or mild pity.

Scott, however, was pensive. "What is it?" she asked as they exited out into the brisk night wind and the intermittent illumination of streetlights.

"It wasn't much of a date movie, was it?"

She laughed at him. "I didn't mind. I told you, I love Katharine Hepburn and she won an Oscar for that performance."

Scott didn't reply immediately and their steps slowed as they neared the little parking lot with its old, cracked blacktop. He didn't forget and look down even once, though it meant he stumbled over pavement breaks. People were still moving out of the theater, a soft shuffle of voices in half-heard conversations. Finally, Scott said, "You know, I'm not sure if he hated her or loved her. Henry, I mean."

"I think he felt both. That's the tragedy of it." She was silent a moment, then went on, "I remember this pair of professors who taught at Bard with Dad. The woman was on the history faculty, and her husband was in English, or philosophy, I don't remember now. Anyway, they lived on the same street we did, and were married for a while, then got a divorce, but the weird thing was that he used to come over to the house all the time after. He mowed her lawn. They had a daughter, sure, but it was more than that. I swear, they even still had sex. I asked Dad about it once and he said, 'They love each other, they just can't live together.'" They were silent for five more steps. "I think Henry and Eleanor were like that. Love's a strange thing. Sometimes people make their own arrangements, despite convention."

Only belatedly did she realize how that had sounded, but thankfully, he didn't comment. They'd reached the car and she turned to lean back against the passenger side so she could face him. He continued to play blind, not looking directly at her as others climbed into cars and drove away, a hum of motors and flash of headlights. "Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry Plantagenet met and fell in love when she was still married to her first husband," Jean said. Daughter of a British history professor, she knew all her kings and queens. "She was older than Henry by eleven years." Her lips quirked up. "She had quite the reputation, the Crusading Queen."

"I kinda gathered that from the movie. Did she really have an affair with Henry's father?"

"Who knows? She certainly had an affair with Henry." Jean laughed. "She was four months pregnant when they married, and they were married only two months after her marriage to Louis was annulled. Do the math. Anyway, according to legend, she helped him to his throne and they loved each other madly - and fought like cats and dogs. She was very smart; that was part of the problem." She looked off. "Great kings look for equally great opponents, I think. But Henry didn't have an equal, unless it was his own wife."

"So he locked her up and had affairs with a string of pretty girls?"

"It was a different world, Scott. Men didn't take kindly to smart women with minds of their own."

He leaned into the car beside her, weight on his hip, facing her. "I like smart women with minds of their own."

She could feel the heat in her face. "Do you? Have men really changed?"

"I'd like to think so."

"Then why were they never interested in me?" It was said sharply, and she raised her eyes to meet his behind quartz. He seemed to have forgotten he was supposed to be blind. "All they wanted was to get in my pants." It was, almost, a challenge.

"Then they were stupid."

"You don't want to get in my pants?" And that _was_ a challenge.

His smile was genuine, but also calculated to be charming. "I want in your pants, but I also want in your head."

"You know just what to say, don't you?"

"I'm not lying."

And he wasn't. She knew he wasn't. But she grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket and shook him a little - frustrated. She felt like crying. "I want to believe you."

"You can read my mind, but you still doubt it?"

"I _want_ to believe. It's just . . . hard." She'd said the same thing in the Danger Room weeks ago and he put his arms around her, wrapping her up and hating the men who'd made her mistrust, who'd made her shy. But that also made him remember Phoebe - pretty Phoebe who he hadn't thought about in ages, but now he recalled what he'd done, and the old guilt came crashing back. Jean sensed it and, troubled by doubts already, reached to discover the cause. For the first time, he flinched back mentally from her, yet he wasn't experienced enough to keep her out, and she - clumsy with sudden alarm - stripped him bare.

Disillusioned, she pulled away to stare at him, and conscience-stricken, he dropped his gaze. He couldn't speak; shame had stopped his voice. He expected her to walk away and leave him there. But for Jean, it was the back handed confirmation she'd needed, the assurance that what he wanted from her was different. She _wasn't_ Phoebe. And he wasn't Ted.

"I can hardly throw stones, Scott," she whispered. Tentatively, she reached out to run her palm down the slick leather of his jacket. "It was a long time ago. You were drunk at the time, she consented, and you apologized later - which is a hell of a lot more than anyone ever did for me. You actually regret it."

"I didn't mean to hurt her," he said.

She studied his face. "I know," she said finally. "And I didn't mean to hurt Ted. But he wasn't you." She brushed his cheek with a fingertip. "I was waiting for you to grow up," she confessed.

"I grew up."

"Yeah, I noticed."

"You fought it."

"I did. But the age difference will never go away. I'll be forty when you're thirty-two. Will you still love me when I have gray in my hair and lines on my face and cellulite on my hips?"

He made a choked sound, somewhere between pain and disgust. "Why do you keep coming back to that? Why do you think I give a damn? If I love you, I love you. I didn't fall in love with your hips, or your hair, or your face. I fell in love with you, okay? You keep reducing it to the outside and that's really insulting, y'know? Like I don't have a heart, or a brain in my head. How can you possibly say you love me if you think I'm that shallow?"

She could feel the jagged, deep pain behind the question and, for the first time, spun her doubts around to look at them from his perspective. And he was right. It was insulting. "It may take me a while," she admitted finally. "I do believe you, Scott, or I wouldn't be here. I just . . . Be patient with me, okay? I have to learn to trust you." She swallowed, almost convulsively, and tilted her head. "It's like all those bad teen-flicks where the star quarterback asks the science geek to the prom. That doesn't happen in real life."

Leaning in, he pushed his forehead against hers. "I was never a quarterback, okay? I'm just Scott, who loves Jean. Can we leave it at that?"

It made her smile, and tear up (embarrassingly) for no good reason. "Yeah," she whispered.

"Good. Now kiss me and unlock the door, so we can go home. You have to get up early."

She did as he ordered, though it was rather difficult to find the keyhole when she couldn't look because he had hold of her and was kissing her hard in the (now empty) parking lot. And the hot flashes happened all over again in the pit of her belly and the backs of her knees. And he was just Scott. And she was just Jean. She wrapped her free arm around his neck as the alchemy of a kiss turned affection into raw carnality, and why, she wondered, did this scare her so much? How could he make her want him like this? She'd never felt so much for anyone, and some part of her was waking up from hibernation. Wasn't she allowed to feel this?

Finally, she got the door open, but he didn't seem inclined to stop so he could get in. She had to pull away. She was panting. "Do you still want me to drive? Everyone's gone."

"You've been driving since the beginning, Jean." He wasn't talking about the car.

Embarrassed, she looked away and walked to the driver's side. He was right. She was driving, and she took them back to Salem Center from White Plains, but as they turned onto Greymalkin Lane, she headed right on a little-used access road off the main drive. "Why are you going to the lake?" he asked.

She didn't answer, her hands tight on the wheel to keep them from shaking and her throat too dry to speak. Finally, she came to a stop on a little gravel drive leading to the boat house. It was pitch black out here away from the mansion or any town, and the car's lights reflected off the side of the building and caught the yellow flash of some animal's eyes as it scurried off. Her heart was beating fast and she was afraid to look at him, afraid to see his expression. "I've never done this 'park thing' before," she blurted, "unless you count by proxy." And she wasn't sure how much that mattered. In memory, she had a hundred times more experience than Scott, from a hundred different lives; but in her own reality, she had far, far less. Those lives weren't this life, those bodies weren't her body, and those men weren't this man. Just Jean. She had to be just Jean, and this night was hers. She couldn't let those other lives rob her of her own. "So what do we do now?"

A momentary pause, then his voice came, sounding amused. "Well, I'd suggest getting in the back for starters. Bucket seats don't make things very easy." Reassured by his tone, she glanced over to find him turned in the seat, watching her. The dashboard lights reflected off his glasses and high cheekbones. Sometimes, like now, the stark beauty of his face took her breath away, and she wondered (not for the first time) how much more shocking he would be, if she could see his eyes? She also wondered (not for the first time) if he'd have looked at her twice, had his life not been disrupted by his mutation? His last prom date had been the head cheerleader. But then she remembered his rebuke, outside the theater, not to forget he had a mind and a heart, and was it any less cruel to condemn others for their beauty, than for their homeliness or their age or their skin color?

Scott watched her watching him, and if he couldn't guess the exact nature of her doubts, her distress was still plain to see in dark eyes huge like a deer's, and liquid. He felt nervous, too, but a thrumming excitement overshadowed it, and her boldness enchanted him, largely because it was so artless. Leaning over, he stroked her cheek with the back of his knuckles. "I've never done this 'park thing,' either," he told her.

Her expression was startled. "Really?"

"Really." He didn't think the experience in Lee's van with the crazy girl Pam counted. "Trust it, Jean," he said. "Trust yourself. It's not some performance, okay?" And reaching around, he unlocked the rear door on his side and got out to climb in back. Jean watched him over the top of her seat, then abruptly, did the same, joining him. She'd brought the keys with her and he snagged them away, leaning over the front seat to return them to the ignition so he could turn on the radio. The station was playing Bruce Springsteen, "Dancing in the Dark."

_You can't start a fire. You can't start a fire without a spark,_  
><em>This gun's for hire, even if we're just dancing in the dark . . . <em>  
><em>You can't start a fire worrying about your little world falling apart.<em>

He almost laughed at the serendipity, but when he settled back, she was sitting very demurely, half tucked into a corner, hands folded in her lap, eyes resting on them. _Christ_, he thought; she looked like a virgin on her wedding night, and that bothered him. "Jean, maybe we should just go back to the house. You do have to get up in about three hours, and - "

"_No!" _Then more calmly, "No, no." She raised her eyes. They didn't appear frightened, and they weren't demure, and whatever doubts he'd had vanished.

Leaning across the space between them, palm cupping the back of her neck, he kissed her hard, and it was all fire inside, all sensation. His skin burned. There was no room for thinking, only feeling. "Trust this," he whispered between licking the corner of her mouth and sucking her bottom lip. "Trust your body. I won't hurt you. I won't do anything you don't want to do."

_I know_, she replied, and without hesitation, slipped down on the leather seat beneath him, pulling him on top, between her knees. "Be careful of the glasses," she whispered.

"They're tight," he whispered back. "And my eyes are shut."

"Maybe we should just take them off - "

"No!" His turn to protest vehemently, and his whole body had tensed up. "No. It's not safe."

"Okay. Shhh."

He shifted, moving his mouth down over her chin to her neck and across her chest to her right breast, impatiently pushing up the fabric to expose black lace. She was glad she'd taken the trouble to wear something other than cotton tonight, and maybe she should have been ashamed, but she couldn't summon the necessary remorse. Instead, she locked her ankles behind his legs and pressed his head against her chest. "Oh, God, oh, God," she muttered over and over, and he rose up a little on his knees, enough so that he could slide his hand over the crotch of her pants, pressing the seam of her khakis against her swollen labia. She rocked against his hand until he moved it, wiggling his fingers under the waistband while he switch attention from one breast to the other. But he was a little too eager, and missed his balance, shifting right when he should have shifted left.

He fell off the seat onto the car floor, almost taking Jean with him.

It startled them both so much, he sat with his jaw hanging open while she burst out laughing. That altered his expression from surprise to humiliation and she bit the back of her hand to stop giggling. "Oh, Scott, I'm not laughing at you. It's just _funny_!"

And it was. Abruptly, he started laughing as well, then came up off the floor, grabbing her in his arms and tickling her. She squirmed and tickled back, and it ended with him on the bottom and all the tension of their uncertainties dissipated. They'd been too deliberate; he'd forgotten this was his best friend. Now, nose to nose, they smiled at each other in the dark. Just Jean. Just Scott. "Love you," he said.

"Ditto," she replied, then straightened up, grabbing her shirt by the hem and yanking it over her head to fling it into the front seat. His jacket and shirt followed, and her bra. He wished he could see better in the dark, had to content himself with touch as his palms examined her body. "We're going to get cold," she told him.

"I'll keep you warm."

"That's a corny line, Scott."

"Yeah, well, it's true, isn't it?"

She considered that while he kissed her nipples and rubbed her ass through her pants. She could feel the cool metal of his glasses in contrast to the heat of her flesh. "Okay, it's true. Ah - !" He was _biting_. Just a little. It felt good. And this time, he got her pants unzipped and his hand down her panties without either of them falling off the seat. His fingers explored her swollen slickness, sweet and jagged, and she moaned for him, rocking back and forth on his hand while he brought his other up to pinch and stroke her neglected breast. Sensation spiked in her, intense and quick, and she rocked harder, breath stopped and trembling on the edge of orgasm like a water droplet held distinct by surface tension. Scott was awed by the power of it. "Let go, Jean," he whispered against her pale flesh. "Let it go. Trust it. Trust your body." Body knowledge - she couldn't _think_ herself into this, and he wanted to take her there, wanted to give it to her. He slipped his fingers all the way inside her, stroking, seeking the small, ridged area on the front wall, but it was hard with his hand constrained by two layers of cloth. She raised herself a bit, trying to push the pants down. "Just a minute, just a minute," she said.

He let her go, holding his wet hand apart as she slid her pants off without much formality and then worked on his, but she couldn't tug them past his thighs without him getting up and he wasn't inclined to do that. Instead, he pulled her back down on top of him so he could reach her breasts again, and her hand closed around his erection. _Don't! _he sent into her head. _I'll come! _

_I thought that was the idea? _

_Not yet. I don't want to come yet. _

She let him go, reluctantly, and dragged her hand up over the side of his abdomen to the rise of his ribs. His own hand went back down between her legs, pushing her thighs wide so he could slide two fingers inside her again, looking for the right spot. Finding it this time, he shifted his hand until his thumb rubbed her sensitive nub and his fingers could press the magic spot inside, eliciting a shocked yell. Delighted, he began to fuck her with his fingers, in and out, in and out, and she arched back in the faint moonlight. It outlined her long abdomen and shallow breasts with an amethyst that turned crimson to his sight. She was all fever and fire, and she keened as she moved up and down on his hand. It was utterly raw, no thought, not even room for thought, and he could feel her _wanting_ him. It excited him so much he thought he might ejaculate on the spot without any help beyond the sight and sound of her. _Touch yourself; show me how you touch yourself_, he begged, and she did, even as she slammed down on his hand to force his fingers deeper, her inner muscles clenching on him. Up and down, up and down, as she rubbed at her nipples with both hands. He watched, his mind fogged with lust and wonder. She was wild, like a raptor diving, and when she came, she shrieked. It wasn't ladylike at all. He loved it.

She collapsed on him then and he couldn't stop grinning, though he could sense her surprise. "I've never come like that," she said. "Not the first time." That she didn't usually come at all the first time, he picked up from her mind; but this hadn't been about him. Maybe he was trying to prove something, he wasn't sure, but it hadn't been about him. After a minute, she added, "There really is a G-spot."

"There really is a G-spot," he replied, laughing and wiggling (sticky) fingers. It had taken a little time, a little patience, and some willing experimentation with Clarice to find it, but once he knew what he was looking for, it wasn't too hard to locate.

She raised herself up enough to glare down at him, her lips pursed. "You're awfully pleased with yourself."

"Shouldn't I be?"

She thwacked him and sat up further. Her carefully teased hair was a mess and she felt so wet between her legs that she feared she would slick the leather seats. The whole car smelled of sex, and they'd have to do something about that before anyone else needed to use it. He seemed happy and relaxed, but not with the same post-orgasmic boneless bliss she felt, and she remembered that he wasn't finished. Sliding off the seat onto the floor, she shook her hair over his chest and he laughed. "That tickles." She drew the hair lower, then, over his stomach, and lower to his groin - heard him hiss in his breath. "Jean . . ." Raising her head, just a little, she used a hand to lift his cock and then licked it from base to tip. "Jean!"

Her turn now, and she gave reign to her imagination, and the memories in her head. They were good for something. She blew over the cock head, then drew the flat of her tongue right across the slit, and if she'd never much cared for the taste of semen, she did like how he'd stopped talking and was gripping the door handle with one hand as he tried not to buck. She ran her tongue-tip all along the flared head and pressed it into the indentation of the frenulum, then swallowed him as far as she could and _hummed_. He shouted. She drew back to whisper, "I'm not on the pill. Not yet. Is it okay if we do it this way?"

His teeth were gritted. "I have a condom."

"What?"

"In my wallet, I have a condom."

She licked him again, like a Popsicle. "Should I be offended by that, or do you always carry one?"

"It was a joke," he replied, breathless. "Frank gave me one before we left. It was just a joke."

"Frank would - and how do you know it was a joke?" She stopped and stared at him down the length of his body; he'd raised his head enough to look back at her. "It's _Frank_, Scott."

"Son of a bitch," he muttered, and she just laughed, pulling his pants off and fishing in his back pocket for his wallet, which she handed over to him. He got out the condom and tore it open, but let her put it on him. Then he sat up with his back against the seat and she settled on top, long legs to either side as he guided her down on top of him. She was amazed he didn't come instantly, he was so wound up. But he didn't, and she tried to hide the fact that it burned when he entered, but didn't think she succeeded; that was the downside of their link. "You okay?" he whispered.

"I'm fine," she lied. And why, she wondered, did this still hurt? Shouldn't it have stopped hurting by now? It sure as hell wasn't the first time. Yet she wanted it more than the pain could put her off. He was _inside_ her, and that was right; it was _right_.

"Fuck me," she whispered, shocking herself with her own frankness. Ladies didn't say that, and he was shocked, too, but pleasantly. She decided that she liked being a woman better than being a lady. _"Fuck me,"_ she said again, just to hear it, and he obliged, his hands warm on her hips, showing her his rhythm. It built in him, the wet slide and intense pressure, his balls clenching, his teeth clenching . . .

_"AH!"_

The explosive uncoiling arched him up and raised her off the seat as he pumped into her in spurts. One, two, three . . . four. A weak five. Subsiding on six. Her arms were strong around his neck and his were about her waist - mouth to mouth, breathing each other. "_Good God_," he said when he was done, and then they didn't say anything, just sat until the blood was back where it belonged and his heart wasn't racing. He stroked her back compulsively, strumming the ridges of her spine with his thumb. "Love you," he said against her lips.

"Ditto," she replied, kissing the tip of his nose.


	21. La dolce vita

**Warning: ** More adult material.

* * *

><p>Delirious and happy, Scott spent most of the next day trying to function past the roar in his blood and the sweet ache in his chest. Vivid memories of the night before struck him at unexpected moments, while erasing a blackboard, tying a shoe, or picking up a book someone had abandoned on a table in the solarium. He remembered the reflection of the setting sun in her dark eyes, or the feel of her skin under his thumb, or the way she'd opened her mouth beneath his, not too shy to kiss him back. (He hated doing all the work.) Only some of his memories were from the night's surprise ending, and he oscillated between a subdued daze and an exuberant agitation that amused the rest of the mansion's residents, his students not least.<p>

"They got in after midnight, that's for sure," Julio Rictor told the small crowd of four boys outside near the reflecting pond. A light wind rippled the water and wafted the scent of freshly mown grass; spiky iris bloomed purple and yellow behind beds of starred dahlias. "And probably later than that," Julio said to satisfy the curious faces. "I saw Dr. Grey come downstairs this morning and she looked pretty tired."

"Was she acting as crazy as Summers?" Rusty Collins asked.

"Dr. Grey? Not hardly. But she was grinning," Julio said. "And she told me 'good morning.' She never says 'good morning.'"

"Oh, man, he _so_ got some," Rusty announced.

"Maybe," Julio allowed, "but she didn't come out of _his_ room."

"Don't mean he didn't get some," Rusty argued.

At supper, Ororo and Frank found themselves alone with Hank after Scott wandered off to phone the hospital. "That's the third time today," Henry said, frowning. "He'll get her in trouble." His mood had been dicey for the past several weeks, and most of the mansion had attributed it to a conference he was to attend in a month - the first public appearance he'd make since his full (very blue) mutation. Frank and Ororo had other ideas about the cause, and now traded a glance.

"I think she would tell him," Ororo said quietly, patting Hank's arm. Hank didn't reply, but he left soon after. Ro sighed and raised her eyebrows at Francesco. He simply shrugged.

"So," she said after a minute, in French, "did you notice that Scott had the Mercedes out this morning on the driveway, with all the doors open? He was shining the leather seats with Armor All. It seemed a strange thing to do between classes."

Frank's eyebrows hopped. "Really? That is odd." When he didn't say anything else, she kicked him under the table. "Ow!"

Jean's shift ran until eleven again, and she didn't make it back to the mansion until just before midnight. Scott had found an excuse to hang out in the garage, working on cars. Ever since his return from California, he'd once again taken over vehicle care as he'd promised Hank long ago, and as Jean's Camry eased into its usual spot, he stood up from where he'd been checking spark plugs on an old Corvette. "Isn't it a little late for that?" she called, getting out.

Embarrassed, he shrugged and strolled over, wiping his hands on a greasy towel, then stopped with perhaps five feet between them, suddenly shy for no good reason that he could think of. So was she, but he pulled her like gravity and she fell in, approaching him until they were face to face. Bending but not touching her white coat with his dirty hands, he kissed her. She kissed back. Pulling away after a minute, she whispered, "You smell like car engines."

"Sorry." Another kiss, quick.

"Let me go upstairs and change. I've got to get out of these heels."

"Why you wear those heels" - a kiss - "in the first place" - another kiss - "beats me."

"You're a dope," she told him fondly, and ducked away, laughing, before he could kiss her yet again, slipping through the side entrance into the back hall. "Come knock on my door in five minutes." He sighed and looked at his grease-coated hands, then back at the Corvette, and returned to finish what he'd started.

In her room, Jean kicked off the pumps and shimmied out of her skirt, draping it over the back of her chair to air out, her suit jacket following it. The white blouse landed in the laundry bin, and dressed only in bra and panties, she entered the bathroom to brush her teeth, touch up her makeup, and refresh the perfume at her pulse-points. Then she put on a little silk minidress she liked because it showed lots of leg but was still comfortable, and went to crash on her bed for just a moment because her eyes felt so heavy.

And naturally, exhausted from a sixteen-hour shift after very little sleep, she dozed off.

Five minutes later (or maybe four and a half), Scott rapped softly on her door, then rapped again when she didn't answer. "Jean," he called softly, glancing down the hall in both directions. He didn't want any students catching him slipping into her bedroom. There was still no answer, and frowning, a tad worried, he cracked the door. The lights were on but he didn't see her at first, and was just about to call out when he spotted her collapsed on her bed, her (bare) feet still on the floor. She was so deeply asleep, she was snoring. Grinning, he slipped inside the room and stared down at her a minute in the bright glare of a bedside lamp. One edge of her dress had hiked up enough to show her panties and he ran fingertips over her long thigh, feeling the light hairs. Could one die of longing, he wondered? But he could also see the bruises under her eyes from lack of sleep, and bending, he lifted her legs up onto the bed, pulling back the sheets and then covering her with them. Turning out the light, he kissed her temple and left her to sleep (checking the alarm on the way out). The next morning, when the buzzer went off, she startled herself awake, then remembered why she was wearing something other than nightclothes, and cursed at having stood him up. She showered, dressed and slid an apology under his bedroom door. He called her at lunch and they made plans to meet for a late dinner in Manhattan when she got off her shift at nine, then he surprised her by showing up at the hospital itself instead of at Bel Canto. "Hey, pretty woman." He had flowers, and was dressed in a jacket and tie. Charmed, she let him kiss her on the mouth in greeting. It was the first time they'd done so where anyone they might know could see - a confirmation of something - and a few of the nurses behind the station whistled and clapped. She blushed; he just gave that cocky grin.

When she ducked behind the station to grab her purse, a Cuban girl named Juanita whispered, "Is he _fine_, or what? Look at that mouth!"

Ears warm with both defensiveness and pride, Jean whispered back, "He's also very _nice_."

"Ooo, he can be nice to me any day!"

Smiling tolerantly, Jean narrowed her eyes a bit, then glanced at Scott. He was watching, but she could feel (if not see) that his eyes were locked on her, and her jealousy faded like spring snow. _You have a fan club_, she sent. He gave a little self-deprecating shrug, but not as if he doubted it, and the unconscious conceit of that might have annoyed her if it hadn't been so ingenuous. _Peacock_, she told him. All that got was another of his blinding smiles as she left the station to join him.

"If I'm a peacock, you're a phoenix," he whispered, taking her free hand and drawing it around to tuck it inside his elbow. "All that bright plumage." He ruffled her (freshly dyed) red hair.

It was a warm night, and they had to walk some blocks after parking. The lights were bright like her joy, and she liked the burble of people around them. She kept smiling at him; he kept smiling back. They held hands tightly. When they reached the restaurant, they found such a line that they left again, winding up at a deli half an hour from closing time. He hand-fed her potato chips and she caught his fingers in her mouth at one point, licking off the salt with wet provocation, then smiled when his breath stopped. Her own boldness thrilled her.

He took her dancing afterward, and she discovered again that knowing and being weren't the same. The hard pulse of pop music throbbed in her jaw and sternum and the palms of her hands; she felt almost as if she could caress it. It slid over her body like a skintight dress, undulating, and she reveled in the feel of his fingers on her hips and his breath on her cheek and the sweet brushes when their bodies connected momentarily. Dancing was sex with their clothes on.

Later, tipsy, they stumbled out onto the sidewalk, laughing, and made their way back to their parked cars. "Are you sober enough to drive home?" she asked him when they stopped beside her Toyota. He had his arms around her waist and was busy nibbling her jaw line.

"Yeah, I'm fine," he replied against her skin. "Or fine enough. It hits me hard, then passes fast."

"You're not acting fine."

"I'm not drunk on beer. I'm drunk on you."

Laughing, she shoved him back with her hands and her TK both. "You are such a corndog."

"That's all? I thought you were going to say I was a horndog."

"Oh, God - get _out_ of here. You're terrible! I'll see you back at the mansion."

With a last kiss on her cheek, he headed off, and it struck her how different this night in town had been than the one a little over a week ago. She touched the skin of her neck and jaw where his mouth had been.

Back at the mansion, they wound up in his room because it was closer. He kicked the door shut and she locked it with her mind. "Bed is better than a backseat," he muttered while he could still think enough to speak. How they got their clothes off remained a mystery to them later, but his pants and underwear wound up in a lump under the covers at the foot of the bed, and her dress landed on the floor somewhere in the vicinity of his desk, along with his jacket, shirt, and tie; they didn't find her bra for two days. The bright turmoil of his body fascinated her, but it was a tender awe. She wanted him just as much. It throbbed in her, low in the belly and down between her legs. His tongue traced her jawline, the point of her shoulder, the hollow inside her elbow, and the scoop of her navel. Normally, she was too ticklish, but not now. His palms were hot on her skin and she could feel the scrape of his short nails and the bristle of his beard. She parted her thighs for him, spreading herself shamelessly as he climbed between them. They'd gone well past the event horizon of teasing and now hurtled headlong into a singularity of physical fusion. Despite their ardor, or perhaps because of it, he never made it inside her but spilled himself too early on her white hip, much to his apologetic chagrin. She whispered that it didn't matter (and kept to herself that she was actually rather glad of it), then shyly asked him to use his hands again on her, which he did, and swallowed her scream by kissing her when she came. Stunned, they lay together for a while after, all out of words. She liked the rise and fall of his chest beneath her cheek, and licked the sweat off his skin like she'd licked the salt earlier. He tried to rouse himself for twice, but her body was too wrung, and she distracted him with kisses, retiring finally to her own room (borrowing his robe) despite his protests. "But I want to wake up beside you," he said.

"Not yet."

"Why not?"

"I don't know," she replied, and she didn't because she was sure even then that soon she'd be waking up beside him for the rest of her life. It wasn't the certainty of prescience, like Frank's, just of rightness. They fit together. But she still wanted a little space for herself, some elbow room to get used to the idea.

"I love you," she told him earnestly. It wasn't a consolation prize.

He smiled. "Ditto."

* * *

><p>Just as Achilles had known that his own death would follow on the heel of Hector's, so Francesco Placido knew that when Scott and Jean became a couple, his own days with Ororo were numbered. Yet Achilles had gone out anyway to avenge Patroclus, and Frank had been making choices for a year that would bring back Scott. Some matters went beyond the personal. Nonetheless, he clung to Ro more tightly in the weeks that followed Scott's first date with Jean, and Ororo thought it merely sympathetic ardor; Frank was a romantic. It was only later that she understood.<p>

"What the _fuck_ were you thinking, you idiot?"

Back in the jet, covered in streaks of soot and hair singed, Scott had rounded on Frank to bellow like a master sergeant. "You could have gotten yourself _killed_ back there! You could have gotten Ro killed!"

"Scott - " Ororo began

Frank interrupted her. "It might have gone differently - "

"I don't give a rat's ass how it might have gone!" Scott interrupted in turn. "You can't double and triple think everything! You did that at Fort Tryon, too, and got your leg broken! Warren had to take you back to the mansion. And if Ro hadn't been there a few minutes ago, the fire would have had you!"

Frank met Scott's eyes behind the visor and said, "I cannot do otherwise. You are Cyclops. You see with a singular vision. I am Cassandra, cursed by Apollo. I see everything."

"Well you damn well can't _act_ on everything in the middle of a crisis!"

"I know," Frank replied. There was a finality to his answer, and if Scott hadn't meant anything more by his remark than simple admonishment, his mouth now snapped shut and he stared at his friend. Then without saying anything more, he walked to the front of the jet and sat down in the pilot's seat, starting the engines and staring out the windshield at the blackness of the Arizona desert night. It was overcast still from Ororo's unseasonable storm (used to extinguish the fire) and he couldn't see any stars. In the back, he could hear Ororo speaking softly to the boy they'd rescued. St. John Allerdyce, he'd called himself, a pyrotechnic similar to Rusty Collins, except Rusty created fire - an energy converter like Scott himself - whereas John only manipulated it, like Ro manipulated the weather.

After a minute, Ro joined him, taking the co-pilot's seat. She didn't look at him; her chin was set. "He can't help it, Scott," she said, meaning Frank, not the boy.

"That's the problem," Scott replied as he checked engine gauges. "He can't help it - or stop it. It's his gift. Fence check - cleared hot." And he cranked up the Pegasus engines, swiveling the fans down to lift the Blackbird off the high school basketball court where they'd set down and cloaked themselves.

He and Ro didn't speak beyond piloting commands all the way back to New York, while Frank sat in the back with the new boy, telling him about Xavier's and answering questions. That, Scott thought, was where he belonged - not in a combat situation - and by the time they settled the plane into its hangar under the basketball court, he knew what he had to do.

"Ororo," he said as he began a shut down, "would you take John to the professor? Frank, please stay with me."

Ro glared at him, lips thin, but did as he asked without further argument. Mid-plane, she paused beside Frank and spoke to him in French, something soft and low that Scott couldn't hear clearly, even if he'd been able to understand. He swallowed. When she and the new boy were gone, Frank took her place in the co-pilot's seat. Neither of them spoke for a long time while Scott recorded flight data on a clipboard. Frank just stared out at the hangar. It was very quiet, only the sounds of the engines humming down and the scratch of Scott's pen on the paper. Their new uniforms were hot and Scott unzipped his jacket. Finally, realizing that Frank wasn't going to make it easier on him, he swiveled his seat to look at his friend. "It's not working."

Frank nodded in quiet agreement; he hadn't made this easy on purpose. Scott had to be the _leader,_ not a friend.

When Frank didn't reply, Scott went on, carefully, "Can you promise it won't happen again? If I tell you to move, you'll move?"

"No."

It wasn't the reply Scott had expected and he blinked behind the visor. He'd assumed that Frank would make whatever promises were required to stay on the team. But faced with Frank's blunt truth instead, he looked away at the aircraft system displays. "Frank, I can't take you with us if you're going to freeze up every time you can see three or four outcomes to a crisis." He glanced up again at his friend.

Frank's eyes were sad rather than hard or angry. "I know. Quit dodging it, Scott."

"What do you mean?" Scott yelled, frustrated. "You _want_ me to kick you off?"

"I want you to do what you have to do."

Scott swallowed. "Fine. I want you off the team, Frank - before you hurt yourself or someone else." And the irony of that - of 'firing' Francesco Placido from the very team his own vision had brought into being - tasted sour.

But Frank simply nodded and got to his feet, took off his uniform jacket (now devoid of the big, white X-target on the back), and handed it to Scott. "It's done."

He left the plane then. Scott watched him pause in the hangar to light a cigarette, then head inside. There was a slight hesitation in his pace, a catch of sadness, and Scott sat alone on the plane a while, tap-tap-tapping with his pen against the side-stick controller; finally he went inside as well, his feet dragging. It was after two in the morning. Jean was waiting in his room, asleep in his bed, and woke when he came in. He didn't need to tell her what he'd done. She read it all out of his mind, along with his grief and his self-reproach, and rising in the room's dark, came to slip her arms around his shoulders, holding him. For the first time that night, they slept together without a prelude of sex, his head on her chest as she stroked his sweaty hair. (He hadn't even showered.)

Ororo didn't speak to him for days, though Scott ran into Frank the very next morning at breakfast. Frank patted the space beside him at the breakfast table. Scott eyed him a moment, then sat down. "No hard feelings?"

"Not really. It was the truth, no?"

"Yeah." Scott drank his orange juice. "Xavier doesn't go into the field, either," Scott pointed out. "Well, not for dangerous stuff." It wasn't, Scott thought, as if Frank were leaving the mansion, or so he believed then. Frank didn't reply.

That was a Sunday, and Jean had the whole day free for a change. They spent it playing in the pool with the kids. Scott managed to cut his hand and Jean took him inside to play doctor and wrap it, then they made mute love on her bed with the windows open to the sound of students outside, a plane going by overhead, and the smell of late June heat. He was on top. He liked being on top, though he was embarrassed to admit it. He liked the feeling of power, of possession, and the intensity of sensation from that angle. But he didn't miss the fact that she bit her lip, brow furrowed, when he pierced her. It killed something in his chest, and he had a hard time hitting his climax. If he liked the sense of potency, _pain_ didn't excite him, and he couldn't get past that small frown and the physical pang that had licked at the edge of his awareness. Afterward, he finally found the nerve to ask, "It still hurts when I enter you, doesn't it?"

A long pause. Her gaze slid away, towards the windows with their antique walnut casings. She wished he hadn't brought it up, wished it could have been one of those truths they both knew but didn't discuss. "Yes."

Skewered by doubt, he pressed, "Is it me? Do you need me to go slower, or - "

"No," she said, turning and putting a finger over his lips. "No. It's not you. It's just the way it is for me."

"It's not supposed to be like that," he said, raising himself up a little on the sheets and looking down at her. He was irritated; she sounded content just to put up with it. "There has to be something we can do."

Jean stared at him in surprise. He'd said 'we' - 'something we can do' - and tears sprang. Not understanding, he reached for her. "Jean, honey, I'm sorry. I didn't mean - "

But she buried her face in his chest and clung to him, pouring an emotional syrup of gratitude all over him: he hadn't seen it as just her problem. That made him burn with dim anger. Of course it was _their_ problem. Though truth be told, he was baffled as well - Jean certainly wasn't frigid. She pursued sex with a vigor that charmed and flattered him. "We'll figure it out," he told her.

_Maybe not_, she sent back, feeling melancholy. She'd turn thirty-one in a month and still didn't like sexual intercourse. She wondered if she ever would.

"You're the doctor," he said and got out of bed, annoyed with her defeatism. "Why don't you find out what we need to do differently and we'll do it?"

Rolling over on the sheets, she watched him head for the bathroom. Trust Scott, she thought, to take a pragmatic approach. "It's dyspareunia," she called, forgetting for a moment that the windows were wide open still to the yard below, then she turned bright pink and was glad of her medicalese. Grabbing her robe, she padded towards the bathroom. "Pain in intercourse - dyspareunia," she said more softly as he cleaned himself off, then urinated. She thought it a measure of their growing ease with each other that he didn't seem to mind her watching him take care of bodily functions. "About two in every three women suffer from it at some point." She crossed her arms under her breasts.

Finished, he eyed her. "Two in three? Shit." Then, "Get me my underwear, please?"

She went to find them, tossing them to him as he came out. Plain white briefs. He stepped into them. She knew he didn't like to be fully naked even in his bedroom, or hers, 'flopping around down there,' as he'd put it once. They were both a bit prudish, or too aware of the absurd, and she'd never found the nerve to tell him that she thought male bodies fascinating, and not purely for sexual reasons. As many minds as she'd traipsed through, her own body was that of a woman, the sensations those of a woman when she stroked her skin. She might have Scott's thoughts (and those of other men), but she didn't live inside his body, and she was coming to understand there was a difference.

Now, restrained if not dressed, he walked over to sit down on her bed, his hands folded. She stood with her back to the wall and looked everywhere but at him. "So what do we do about it?" he asked finally.

"I don't know," she confessed in a whisper. It wasn't entirely the truth, but a Victorian shame sealed her lips. "Just keep going, I guess. I'll get used to it eventually. Maybe after I have a baby, or - "

"Jean!"

She glanced at the open windows, and so did he, but he got up to close them, then turned back to her. "It's not fun watching you wince. I'm hurting you - you think I like that?"

And she felt like crying again. "I'm sorry."

"Oh, Christ," he said, crossing to hug her. "Would you stop it? I'm not mad at you." Scott really didn't understand why she got like this at times. It was as if his sophisticated Jean had been whisked away and replaced by a frightened, self-conscious girl who saw everything as her own personal failure. "I'm not mad at you," he said again, kissing her temple. "I love you. I don't want to hurt you. It's not supposed to hurt." Then an idea came to him and he dragged her back to the bed, sat her down, and searched out her reading glasses. These, he handed to her. "Put them on."

She blinked at him like he'd lost his mind. "What?"

"Just do it."

"Okay." She put them on and it made him smile. He liked her in her glasses, especially when she wore no make-up and he could see her freckles. His brainy girl.

"Now, Dr. Grey, you gotta help me. My girlfriend has this problem with sex."

She burst out laughing, despite the tears still on her cheeks. He loved to make her laugh like that, all startled and caught and charmed.

He got down on his knees in front of her, taking her hand earnestly. "I'm serious. I can use my hand on her, and that's fine, but it hurts every time I go inside her. She likes _me_, I think -"

"She does."

"- but she doesn't like sex."

"She likes sex fine. It's intercourse that's the problem."

And that stopped him. He'd almost said, 'same thing,' then realized it wasn't. She was watching him steadily from behind square metal frames and polished lenses, and like his visor was for him, her glasses were her mask. Perhaps he'd made a joke of it, but she _had_ become Dr. Grey, and he'd fallen in love with this part of her as much (maybe more) than the self-conscious girl. "All right," he said finally. "She likes sex. How do we fix the intercourse problem?"

She frowned down at her hands, fisted and opened them again. A woman's hands, not a girl's, with skin that had gone just a bit slack, and she spoke in that slightly-swallowed inflection she had. She always sounded as if she chewed her words before spitting them out. "Some women tighten up spasmodically when their partner attempts penetration. There can be any number of reasons for it from a strict religious upbringing to previous bad experiences." The slight edge in her voice when she said 'bad experiences' made him reach out to catch her fingers in his. "But vaginas were made to widen - they have to fit a baby's head - so treating this amounts to teaching the woman to relax until she can accommodate her partner's penis comfortably."

"So how do we do it?"

Jean still wasn't meeting his eyes; she tilted her head a little and her lips were pursed. "Time," she said after a minute. "Patience. A little creativity - increasing the number of fingers slowly, using a dilator - "

"How about a vibrator?" he asked, trying to lighten the mood.

She teetered for just a moment, rage flashing in her eyes, pupils dilated with the fear that he was making fun of her. Then her lips tipped up as she realized he wasn't and she snapped from Dr. Grey to Just Jean. Pulling off her glasses, she frowned at him with mocking seriousness and said, "What? You want sex toys now? After only six weeks?"

"Vibrator isn't _my_ toy," he replied, flashing teeth.

"You're insufferable."

"And you love me anyway."

"God knows why."

"Because . . . " He leaned in until they were nose tip to nose tip and she could see her eyes reflected in the mirror of his lenses, and his own eyes behind them, glowing red, a little demonic, or at least demented. "Christ, I haven't got a friggin' clue why." And he laughed, pulling back. "Because you're insane?"

Smiling, she fell against him, arms around his shoulders. "I love you because you say 'our problem' instead of 'your problem.' And because you're really cute in the morning with bed-head and your face all sleepy, tripping on the way to the bathroom because you're not awake yet."

"It's your damn shoes I trip over."

"Oh yes, the 'goddamn motherfucking stupid fuck-me heels.' Can't you be more creative than that?"

"What do you want when I'm half-asleep?" He flopped back on her bed, stretched, and grinned up at her. "So - wanna wake up to my bad swearing every day?"

She blinked at him. "What?"

"Move in with me."

Startled, she ran a hand through her hair. "Move in with you?" It had been only six weeks, or really, five and a half, from mid-May till the end of June, and she hadn't told her parents yet, nor had he told his. They'd lived in their private bubble of a spring romance, awash in the glow. Yet she couldn't think of a single, good, concrete reason not to move in with him. For all it seemed rushed, they'd known each other five years, and a part of him lived in her head. Looking down at him, stretched out on her bed in his underwear, as easy as a cat, she suddenly couldn't imagine him _not_ there, couldn't imagine anyone else in his place. Besides, she thought, half her clothes were in his room and half of his were here. They might as well consolidate.

More to the point, he needed the confirmation. She understood that, glimpsed it quite suddenly, hiding in the tenseness of his jaw despite his apparent ease. If she craved the reassurance of his devotion, he wanted their relationship to be public, wanted to know he meant more to her than a guilty pleasure. Wanted to know she wasn't ashamed of him. And she wasn't. Not anymore.

Running her forefinger along one clavicle, she said, "What room do you think we should use? Yours or mine?"

His grin was sudden and bright. "You've got the suite. Mine might be a little cramped."

"Ah!" And she fell on him, pinning him to the sheets (though he was hardly trying to get away). "He only loves me for my sitting room."

"And the veranda. You forgot the veranda."

"You're such an opportunist."

* * *

><p>Scott and Jean occupied two chairs in front of Xavier's desk as yellow morning sunlight danced dust motes through the air near one curtained window. A globe of the world in a wooden frame rested nearby, and Scott and Jean had come early, before she had to leave for her shift at the hospital. "We're going to move in together," Scott had said when they were seated and the door was shut. Then they'd traded speaking back and forth, like a pair of trained parrots. Xavier had listened from his wheelchair, hands folded in his lap. Finally, Jean had ended their announcement-cum-apology with, "We'll take an apartment nearby, if you'd rather. If you don't want the students to, um - "<p>

"Don't be ridiculous," Xavier said finally, losing his patience. "Sharing a room is rather more dignified than one or the other of you skulking up and down the hall after midnight." And they both instantly went three shades pinker than Scott's glasses. "The students are not fools. Neither am I. And Frank and Ororo have been sharing a room under my roof for five years." Which was true, Scott thought, glancing at Jean, who had her eyes lowered. Her lashes were straight rather than curved, and fragile like dragonfly wings.

"You are not children," Xavier said, reminding them of his admonishment on the first night he'd caught them sneaking back into the mansion. "As long as you comport yourselves with dignity and restraint in public, what sleeping arrangements you make are not my concern. Although with the way things have been going, having another empty room might be advantageous." He let an edge of humor slip into the comment. He really wasn't angry, and if it might take him longer to get over his reservations, that was his business, just as what they did behind closed doors was theirs. "I assume you'll be taking Jean's room, since it's larger?"

"Yes, sir," Scott said.

"Then please let me know when the empty room is available for occupation again."

"Thank you, professor," Jean said as they stood and Scott ushered her out with shaking hands that he'd been trying to hide through the entire interview.

In the hallway beyond, they just looked at each other. His eyebrows hopped. "That went easier than I thought."

She nodded. "I need to go or I'll be late." She hesitated, then added, "Why don't you start moving things? Into my room, I mean. I have to work till seven again, but you can start even if I'm not there."

"Okay."

They parted company with a chaste kiss.

* * *

><p>"So can you two come?"<p>

Jean spun around from where she'd been writing med orders in charts. She was in her first week of neurology, which was only one floor up from OB/GYN, so she saw Barb more than usual. "I kinda doubt it. Scott said something last night about taking the kids up to one of the big parks for the weekend, he and a couple of the other teachers, as a summer field trip, so I'm not sure - "

"Jean," Barb interrupted, "Why don't you want me to meet him?"

Muscles knotted in Jean's neck and her stomach twisted. "What makes you think that?"

"'Cause you've been dating this guy for eight weeks and I have yet to meet him, and any time I invite you over, or propose we all go out somewhere, there's an excuse. It's not brain surgery, darlin', whatever floor you're working on." She drew Jean away, off against a far wall where the nurses couldn't overhear. "What is it? Does he hate cats or something?" She grinned.

That made Jean smile. "Actually, I have no idea if he hates cats." She looked away and wrung her fingers against each other. "It's just that he's, well, _shy_ and - "

"A guy sportin' a grin like the one in that photo you showed me ain't shy. And you told me he used to sing lead for a band. Try again."

Jean's eyes flicked over Barb, away, back, and away again. Disjointed snippets of conversations around them seemed loud, and someone, somewhere, was listening to the radio. "He's a mutant," Jean said softly, three stone words thrown into the pool of their friendship, sending ripples.

Barb didn't answer for a minute, though her expression didn't change. "That's how you met him, isn't it? Through your research?"

"Partly. He really did hit my car."

Nodding, the other woman pursed her lips and looked away. Fluorescent lights gleamed off her short blonde curls. Jean had half-expected reassurances that it didn't matter, but they weren't forthcoming. The silence stretched. "What's his mutation?" Barb asked finally.

"He's an energy converter. His body absorbs solar energy and converts it into force blasts."

"Sounds dangerous."

"He's one of the gentlest men I know," Jean retorted. She'd begun to tremble a little with fear, a little with anger, and a veil of uncertainty had dropped over her vision, tucking it in at the corners so that she could focus on only one object at a time. "He's not dangerous," she added.

"Okay," Barb said and, turning abruptly, she walked away. Jean stared after a minute, wondering what had just happened.

"Dr. Grey," one of the nurses called, holding up the chart she'd been writing in. Breathing out softly, Jean pushed away from the wall and went back to work.

Three hours later, Barb was back. "I'd like to meet him," she said without preamble as she caught Jean emerging from a patient's room. "I've never met a mutant," she added.

Jean pursed her lips. Three hours had been time enough for irritation to build. "He doesn't live in a petting zoo," she snapped, then breathed out and looked down at the white tile floor. "Sorry."

"S'okay. I probably deserved it." Once again, uncomfortable silence stretched. "Let's go down to the family room," Barb said and Jean nodded, then led them to a little room set aside for doctors to deliver bad news to family members. It was decorated in shades of gunmetal blue, maroon and pink - calm colors - with low lighting. Generic sea prints hung on the wall, as if offering infinite symbolic horizons. "They make me nervous," Barb began without preamble, or sitting down. "Mutants."

The confession burned like a bullet to Jean's gut.

"It's just the idea of it - of people having special powers like that." Barb hugged herself and couldn't look at Jean. "From a scientific point of view, it's interesting and all. I can understand why you'd want to study it. But at the practical level? There are people running around out there who can do things nobody can stop."

Frozen by a mixture of disillusionment, anger, and unexpected sympathy, Jean tried to swallow and couldn't.

"I never thought I'd be prejudiced," Barb said quietly. "I try not to be. I don't like it. I was raised in a town where people still use the word 'colored' without blinking and I always hated that. Peel back the skin and what's the difference? Maybe that's why I went into medicine. But peel back a mutant's skin and they're _not_ the same. And I feel horrible for saying it." She stopped there. No 'but' followed it, just the bald statement of personal embitterment.

Thawing enough to think, Jean remembered what the professor always said: They're scared, and it's fear that breeds hate. Jean could understand that in the abstract, could accept fear in the faces of strangers on the street, but this wasn't an unknown face. This was the woman she ate dinner with, traded jokes with, the one who'd called to ask about her when she'd been ill, the one who'd taught her not to be ashamed of what she felt for Scott. Squeezing her eyes shut, she struggled not to cry and kept her telepathy tightly reigned. Even so, she could sense that Barb was just as miserable, and it was that shared anguish that birthed Jean's courage to speak.

"Mutants may have different physiologies, it's true. Scott sees differently than you or I, literally. But look into his heart? He's the same - what he _feels_ is just the same. He laughs, he gets mad, he loves, he cries. No different."

Barb sat down finally on one of the couches. Jean sat down opposite her. "It's not really about him," Barb said. "From everything you've told me, he sounds like a good man. But he's just one person."

"You can't condemn everyone, Barb -"

"I'm not condemning _anyone_!" Barb snapped. "I said they scare me. That's not the same thing. I'm not stupid enough to believe it's their fault, or that they chose it, or that it's some kind of divine punishment."

Jean pursed her lips, keeping to herself how condescending that sounded.

"I don't condemn them," Barb went on. "But they scare me all the same."

"Maybe you scare them."

The other woman stopped and stared, mouth dropping open until she looked mildly foolish. "Why would they be scared of _me_?"

"Because they're a minority, and minorities always depend on a society's goodwill." Jean paused to stare into one of the generic pictures; it showed a small fishing vessel on a stormy sea. How apt. "But if the atmosphere is distrustful, they respond defensively - or offensively." She risked a glance at Barb, who listened as if she'd never thought of it that way, and maybe she hadn't.

"In my experience," Jean said now, "most mutants simply want to be left alone_,_ and some are frightened by their own powers. Think - if they scare you, how must it feel to _be_ a mutant? Take Scott for instance; he has these force blasts. They're generated by his eyes - "

"His _eyes_?"

Jean shrugged. "It makes sense, when you think about it, even if it seems odd at first. It's all of a piece. Whatever he sees - literally - he can target. And no, he's not a living weapon. He hates to think of himself that way." Jean reached into the pocket of her white lab coat and pulled out her key ring, tossing it to Barb. Hanging off the ring amid the jingle of keys was a bit of olive wood fashioned into her name: **Jean**. "That was my Christmas present a couple of years ago. He carves wood for fun. The force blasts are better than a knife. He's started doing bigger things now that he's got the hang of it."

Barb looked at the key tag, then handed it back. "It's nice."

"It is. But he worries all the time that he might accidentally hurt somebody, too. He can't change who he is. All he can do is learn to be responsible . . . and learn to carve wood. Mutation is like any special gift. A genius in physics can solve the energy crisis, or create the H-Bomb. I know it's a cliché, but it's true. A pissed-off postal worker with a gun is more dangerous than Scott is."

"What about a pissed-off postal worker without a gun but who had Scott's mutation?" Barb asked, quietly. "We license people to own guns."

Jean looked away, because it was something they worried about themselves. "So do we blame mutants - or postal workers?" Her lips twisted into a wry smile. "A license won't stop a guy from shooting his wife in a 'domestic dispute,' and it doesn't stop someone from stealing a gun, or buying one illegally. It's the person, not the weapon. There's no easy answer, but you're not the only one who's scared, and some of the ones who are most scared are mutants. All it takes is one bad apple. But you can say that of any minority, Barb."

"I know." Once again, she seemed embarrassed, and as upset and disappointed and confused as Jean. She was offering something more rare than platitudes and tolerance; she was offering her honest uncertainties, her fears. These were _real_ feelings, real nakedness.

Abruptly, Jean reached out to grip Barb's hand. "Would you like to meet a mutant?"

Barb looked at her, smiling a little. "I thought you said he didn't belong in a petting zoo?"

"Would you like to, though? Would it make you feel better - less scared?"

Barb wrestled with that. "I don't know," she said truthfully. "Maybe it would."

Jean smiled. "Then you're sitting across from one."

Barb jumped, and Jean watched first surprise, then understanding wash over her face, and she wondered if she'd just made the bravest choice of her life, or the most stupid. "That's why . . ." Barb trailed off.

"Why I went into mutant genetics? Yes, that's why."

"What do you . . . do?"

Jean glanced at the table beside them. A phone, a lamp, and a box of generic ivory tissues. Reaching out with her hand, she lifted the tissue box and drifted it across to where she could catch it out of the air. For now, she'd keep the telepathy to herself. Start small.

"My God," Barb squeaked, and Jean could sense that she was torn between amazement and white terror. "How much can you lift?"

Jean's expression was wry. "Not a whole lot more than this. I've spent most of my time on grad and medical school, not training the TK. I'm not very powerful. I can lift books, chairs, clothes, tissue boxes" - Jean held it up, then sent it to drift back to the end table - "dinner dishes . . . that kind of thing. The more delicate it is, the harder, actually. I don't want to break it. Mom's a little iffy on me and the china." She glanced at Barb. "I'm like Scott - I don't want to hurt anything. 'I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant: I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow . . .'"

". . . to follow.'" Barb's voice picked up hers, "'I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures which are required . . . '"

Jean's voice broke and she could feel the hot wet in her eyes. "I'm a doctor. I'm a doctor first and last. I took the same oath you did and my DNA doesn't change that. I just want to help people."

Barb stared, and then - quite abruptly - leaned forward to hug Jean hard. "Thank you. For trusting me."

Jean hugged back, glad she hadn't erred in her choice of friends, and she remembered something else Xavier had told her, at the same time he'd spoken of hatred and fear - neither reason nor logic would change hearts, and theoretical mutants remained theoretical. Bloodless. It took a friend with skin on.

* * *

><p>"So she's okay with it?"<p>

"Well, she's not spazzing completely," Jean told Scott as they lay in bed together. "You sure you don't mind going over to dinner Saturday? It could be a little . . . strained."

"Then we'll drink a lot of beer. I'd like to meet her finally, and her husband and kid."

"And cats?"

"Well . . . they're cats."

"You don't like cats?"

"I don't dislike cats."

She laughed. "There are four of them. All Siamese."

"Oh, Christ. Yeowl!"

He was swatted for that. "They're very nice cats!"

"I'm sure."

"She could probably get us a cat."

Instead of replying, he rolled her onto her back with himself above - and kicked Ralph the snow leopard off the bed. "The real question is if you're okay with this?"

"With what?"

"With her knowing." He hadn't missed her worry, and now she looked away in the dark of the room. Their room.

"I guess." Despite Barb's tentative acceptance, Jean couldn't help but fear it might change when the woman had time to reconsider. "It's a risk."

"I know," he said softly, and enclosed her with his body. She smiled against his neck in the dark.

* * *

><p>The day had opened with the pregnant heat of late July, the kind that left animals and children sprawled in torpid exhaustion. But by one in the afternoon, purple-angry clouds had gathered and it was storming hard enough to take out power lines, crash branches, and cause flash flooding in low areas. Yet not one of the weathermen had predicted any such break in the temperatures.<p>

Scott peered out the window at a lone figure standing in the midst of it, barely visible behind the sheets of rain, but he could still make out the white hair and outstretched arms. Lips pursing, he went in search of her other half.

Frank sat beneath the porch overhang, smoking. He, too, was watching the figure in the storm. "What the hell is going on?" Scott said from behind him, standing in the open door. Even from here, he could feel the mist of heavy rain, and it wasn't like Ororo to mess with weather patterns this drastically, except in an emergency. She _felt_ the weather, how it created a web of interrelatedness, and didn't abuse it. Or not most of the time.

Now, though, Frank simply reached up to hand Scott a letter whose return was stamped _Università degli Studi di Firenze_, DISPO, _Dipartimento di Scienza della Politica e Sociologia_. The Department of Political Science and Sociology at the University of Florence. "What the fuck?" Scott asked, baffled.

"I am going home."

Scott sat down on the step before he fell down. "_Why? __This_ is home."

"No, Scott. This has been a sanctuary, but it is not home."

"I never meant you had to leave! When I said that, about the team, I didn't -"

"Of course you did not. Nonetheless. It is time for me to go home. I have things to do."

"Couldn't you do it here? You could finish college here, and -"

"Do you think America is the only country that has mutants?"

"Well, no, of course not, but -"

"What can I do from here? This is not my country. I am going home where I can do some good with the gifts I do have."

Scott didn't reply immediately, simply frowned out at the storm and the rocking branches in the pines. "So what are you going to do? Start Westchester _Italia_?"

"Perhaps." Frank smiled faintly. "I am not a fighter, Scott, not as you are. So I will fight with words and the law, and guard, as best I can, the rights of mutants in Europe."

"The professor approved of this?"

"Oh, yes. It is he who will pay for university."

Sometimes, Scott reflected, it felt as if Frank and the professor were directors in some grand play for which the rest of them simply read parts. "I take it Ro isn't going with you?" he asked finally.

"She is not. She is needed here." At least for the time being, Frank added to himself. What the future held remained to be seen, but for now, Ororo couldn't be spared from this place, whereas his own path had diverged on the night Scott had told him he couldn't remain on the team.

"When are you leaving?"

"At the end of the month."

"Is your mother going?"

"No. Only me."

Scott shook his head, then boxed Frank fondly on the ear. "I'm going to miss you."

"There are planes, you know. Italy is a lovely country for visiting when there is snow in New York."

Grinning, Scott crossed his arms over his knees and they both watched Ororo out in the rain. "You will keep an eye on her?" Frank asked. "See that she is safe?"

"You bet."

And thus, it was settled. At the end of July, Frank boarded a plane back to Italy, chasing his visions across an ocean, going home.

* * *

><p>"Hey, Daddy."<p>

John Grey glanced up as the familiar voice drifted from behind the stacks of books that made a maze of his office. She wound through it, his Ariadne, finding his desk at the center, and rising, he gave her a kiss. "What are you doing here, baby girl?"

She looked about for a non-existent chair, then settled on a stack of books instead. Dust puffed up and she waved a useless hand in the hair. "You've been in the Olin Building how many years now, and you still have stacks of unshelved books?"

Hands on hips, John Grey eyed his daughter. "You didn't drive three hours to talk about my sloppy office habits." Jean had always come to him first when she had news she didn't think her mother would want to hear, and truth be told, he'd never dissuaded her. Sarah took after Elaine, but Jean took after him, right down to her height and the red in her hair.

Now, she looked off and twisted her hands on her knees, and he suspected that, whatever the news was, she had her doubts as to how he'd receive it. "I have a boyfriend."

His eyebrow went up. "And?"

"It's Scott. Scott Summers. You know, Scott - "

"I know who Scott is." John sat back down in his chair. It creaked, and he stared at the papers covering his desk, slick fliers from academic publishing companies, a draft of the seven-year review the department had undergone the previous semester, a prioritizing report for the college, and minutes from the last meeting of the faculty senate. Pushing them aside, he stood again, like a jack-in-the-box. "Come on, let's walk."

Bard had all the quaint beauty of any New England college - landscaped flower beds, neo-Roman architecture, ivy-covered buildings. In summer session now, there were fewer students about as father and daughter ambled along a sidewalk. "Are you disappointed?" Jean asked finally.

"I don't know. You tell me. Should I be?"

"No." A twitter of three white-striped, male Carolina Wrens competed in the grass for the attentions of a dun-dull female. Jean watched them. "I love him."

John thought back to the protective caution he'd seen in the face of the boy when he'd met him at Xavier's. He'd seemed ready to plant himself between Jean and any harm, like a bulwark. John Grey had liked that protectiveness, but - "You said he left Berkeley. What's he doing with himself now?" The department head in him was dubious of defecting graduate students.

"Teaching math for the professor. He left Berkeley because his advisor was sacked, Daddy, not because he quit. You know how department politics can be."

Indeed, John did. But he also knew he was hearing only one side of the story, and John Grey was inclined to reserve judgment, both of Berkeley and of Scott Summers. "Is he going back to school?"

"He'll have to, at least for a master's, or he won't be able to teach more than five years in New York."

"That's all he's going to do? Teach high school?"

"Isn't that good enough?" Her chin had gone up. "I thought you told me once that teaching of _any_ kind was a noble profession, right down to preschool."

John frowned. "It is." And he believed that - until it came to the prospects of the man dating his daughter. He didn't want Jean saddled with ballast. This was his baby girl, no matter how old she got.

Jean knew as much, even without her telepathy. Reaching out, she laid a hand on his arm. "He respects me."

"If he respects you, then why'd he let you come up here to run interference?"

She smiled. "He doesn't know I'm here."

John sighed. "And you're counting on me to run interference with your mother now?"

Her smile deepened; she didn't even pretend to deny it. "I love him," she said again instead.

They eyed one another. "All right," John said finally. "Bring him to dinner for your birthday."

She threw her arms around him. "Thank you, Daddy."

* * *

><p>"Hey, Mom, it's Scott - Mike. I have some news."<p>

There was a moment of startled silence over the line. "I wondered when you were going to call," his mother said. "We got your letter about withdrawing from Berkeley." A hesitation. "Your father isn't happy."

Sitting down on the edge of the bed he now shared with Jean, Scott twisted the phone cord into loops around his fingers. "I didn't think he wanted me to go to Berkeley in the first place."

"He didn't. But we didn't raise you to be a quitter, either."

"I didn't _quit_, Mom. They denied tenure to my advisor and that didn't give me a lot of options but to go somewhere else."

"I thought you said you withdrew - ?"

"I did. But it was because I couldn't stay there, not because I gave up." He made no mention of Jean.

"So you _are_ planning to go back to school in the fall?"

Sighing, he rubbed his forehead. "No, Mom." In his mind's eye, he could see her tense up. "I've got to apply to a different school, be accepted, hopefully get another assistantship - I can't just leap frog. So I'm going to teach math next year for the professor, here at the academy. I figure I owe him a thing or two."

"Teaching math?"

"What's wrong with that?"

She didn't reply, and Scott supposed that she wouldn't think she needed to. His father was a lieutenant colonel in the air force, a decorated vet, and what was he? He frowned as his fingers made a complicated knot of the curled cord. "The longer you stay out," she warned, "the harder it'll be to go back. Life has a way of tying you down."

"I know." A pause. "Anyway, I didn't call to talk about the mess with school. I wanted to tell you I have a girlfriend, and it's kind of serious."

"Serious? As in marriage serious?"

"Well, I don't know about _that_ yet, but yeah, serious as in, um, we're sharing the same bedroom serious." And as soon as the words were out of his mouth, he squeezed his eyes shut, wishing them back. He hadn't _intended_ to say that, but her question about marriage had thrown him and he'd spoken without thinking.

And three thousand miles away, in San Diego, Kate Summers was suddenly unsure how to respond. Scott usually talked about his dating only in passing, and his parents hadn't pried. Chris and Kate had recognized long ago that a boy with Scott's face would have girlfriends, and Chris had warned him about responsibility a time or three, but they'd left it at that. To Kate, sex was something that normal boys did, if they had an opportunity, and normal girls, too (honestly), but the good girls didn't flaunt it.

Publicly sharing a bed outside wedlock was flaunting it. "Your professor has sanctioned this?"

"We're adults, Mom. It's our private life."

"But you're living there at the mansion with this girl, where the students can see? And Charles Xavier thinks that's acceptable?"

"It's not Catholic school, Mom." It came out harsher than he'd meant it.

"Catholic or not, there are morals, Mike. Scott." He could hear the fluster in her voice, and not over what name to use. "If you're teaching teenagers, you ought to make an effort to hold yourself to a higher standard!"

Scott's jaw dropped. "What? You think I'm doing her on a table in the dining hall?"

"Mike, don't be crude!"

"You implied it!"

"I did not! But I think there's a certain code of behavior - "

"I won't be a hypocrite! I don't think there's a damn thing wrong with sex before marriage and I'm not going to hide my actions like I'm ashamed when I'm not. It's my private life."

"You're a teacher!"

"We're not parading around in front of the kids! But I'm not going to lie about it. The fact we _did_ move in together ought to damn well say something. That's what I called to tell you. I'm in love, and it's serious. You asked if it was marriage serious - well, I don't know, it's a little early for that - but maybe so. I'd thought you'd be happy. You didn't even ask _who_ it was before you launched into a lecture. Don't you want to know?"

"Well, yes, of course I do."

"It's Jean - Jean Grey."

"Your friend the doctor?"

"Yeah. Not exactly trailer-park trash, y'know?"

And thrown for a second time that night, Kate Summers fell silent. She knew her eldest, knew the tone of his voice, and heard the pride in it. He'd called because he wanted to strut, like a hunting dog who'd brought back an especially fine catch. But the mother in Kate felt only alarm, and now aimed her questions with a mother's instinctive intuition. "Did you go back to New York for her, honey? Did she ask you to come back?"

Scott was startled. "No." It wasn't, technically, a lie, he thought. Jean hadn't asked him to come back, and if he had returned for her, that had been his choice. "We only started dating a couple months ago - _after_ I was back." That wasn't a lie, either.

"Honey, the both of you . . . from everything you've told me, you come from two _very_ different worlds - "

"What _is_ this?" he yelled into the phone. "Can't you approve of anything I do?"

"This isn't about 'approval'! I'm simply trying to tell you something sensible, Michael. Whatever you may feel, and if this is as serious as you say - you still have to be compatible, share the same values, the same ideals, the same beliefs . . . ."

"You didn't say this about Clarice! And she was _black_!"

"And she came from a background more like yours, and was much closer to your age!"

Scott ground his teeth and got up to pace around. "So you care about the age thing, too."

Kate didn't miss the 'too.' "I _worry_" - she stressed it - "about a lot of things. The age difference is part of it, yes, but not all of it." Not even most of it, she thought to herself and sighing, ran a hand through her hair. "This woman is from a completely different class than us, and I don't want you to feel . . . intimidated, or put down for that."

Scott opened his mouth to reply, then swallowed it. His fingers kept twining and untwining the phone cord while he stared at nothing. He was angry, upset, disenchanted, but mostly resentful. At the root of it, they all worried about the same thing - the professor, EJ, his mother . . . "Thanks, Mom," he said now. "Thanks for the vote of confidence. You _don't_ think I'm good enough for her, do you? You think I'm getting _above_ myself with an upper class girl and her fancy degree!"

He heard her shocked, "Honey! That is _not_ -" as he pulled the phone away from his ear and slammed it down into its cradle on the nightstand by the bed. Then he stared at it for the rest of the evening, missing supper. It rang three different times, but he didn't answer.

Jean found him still sitting there when she got home after eight, and picking up on his black mood (and that sometimes he was better coaxed out of brooding than talked out of it), she doffed her shoes and, still in her dress pants, climbed onto the bed to wrap him up from behind. He didn't respond immediately, but gripped her wrist with one hand, and gradually her patience succeeded. He let her into his head to see what had hurt his heart. After a few moments, she leaned around to press her lips to his temple. _Those were your words, Hon, that you're not good enough. That's what _you're_ afraid of. _

_It's what they're afraid of, too. _

_I don't know - maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But it's not their heads I'm in. It's yours, and it's you I'm worried about. You have nothing to prove to me. _

_I did once. It took me four years, almost five, to prove it. _

_And you succeeded. Now be a good little mathematician and put the pencil down. The problem is solved, the proof is done. Let it go, Scott. You're always telling me to quit living in the past. Take your own advice. Having you in my bed is not a pity fuck. _He coughed at that, a little burst of breath at the bluntness of it, though he knew her brain was rarely so prim as her mouth.

"I belong to you," she whispered, giving it reality by giving it voice. "All yours. And you belong to me. So quit worrying and we'll show the rest of them that they don't have any reason to worry either. Deal?" Reaching around, she extending her pinky in front of him.

Scott just blinked at it. "What are you doing?"

"Just hook your pinky into mine. I'll show you." A bit dubious, he complied, and she said, "We're going to prove to them all that we're not a mistake, right?"

"Damn right."

She yanked her pinky free of his. "There. It's done, and we have to keep it because it's a pinky promise."

"It's a what?"

"A pinky promise. That's very solemn, you know."

Turning to look at her, he caught her impish smile and fell back on the bed, putting a pillow over his face to muffle his laughter. "My girlfriend is a loon!"

* * *

><p><strong>Notes:<strong> _La dolce vita_means "the sweet life" in Italian, and is the title of a famous Fellini film.


	22. Tumbling Down

**Warning:** Some adult material, but more notably, the recounting of 9/11, which may well bring up difficult memories for some. Proceed with caution.

* * *

><p>Jean Grey always wore her designer clothing without either self-consciousness or affectation, and she knew what to do with every piece in a full place setting. She could curtsy properly and had taken a little ballet, a little piano, and a little ballroom dancing, and if she hadn't lost her senses at ten, she'd no doubt have come out as a proper debutante at sixteen. She belonged to that strata of society defined as the Middle Rich. Her family wasn't one of the Fortune 500, but her ancestors had come to America in the 1600 and 1700s, sporting a title, and in some circles, that meant more. Scott knew all this, and when he'd been younger, it'd intimidated him as much as her age. Yet at some point in the past five years, the significance had faded and his awareness of her social status had become compartmentalized, so when she'd described the circumstances of Annie's death, he'd assumed it had happened in a normal suburban neighborhood like those he knew.<p>

Thus, when he pulled up the Mercedes before a massive iron gate in a long brick wall and spotted the white, three-story colonial manor behind it, he was stunned. "That's your _house_?" he asked, before he could think to bite it back.

Feeling his astonishment, she glanced at him. "Well, it's my parents' house, yes."

"Where did Annie live?" he asked, still trying to reconcile his mental image with the reality.

"Down there," Jean said, pointing behind them to a quiet street lined by ash trees and old New England homes, quaint and lovely, but mundane enough. "That Tudor right there with all the plants out front." It was, Scott thought, perfectly bohemian and exactly what he'd expected - if two or three hundred thousand dollars nicer. (Clearly 'faculty ghetto' was figurative, not literal.) He just hadn't expected that Jean had come from the House on the Hill, and knew that he could never, from his own ambitions, provide her with anything like this. Even if he lived now at a mansion that was twice as large, it wasn't _his_, that world wasn't his, and he felt it acutely. His mother had been right. He was an East End boy dating a West End girl, and he'd been an idiot to think this relationship had any future.

"What's the code for the callbox?" he asked, trying to keep his voice level as he rolled down the window.

"Actually, I'm not sure these days. They rotate it. Just hit the buzzer; they're expecting us. Scott, are you all right?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine."

Jean knew he was lying, but returning here, it was so easy to slip back into the world of pretenses and cropped conversations. She let it go. When they reached the house proper, she had him park behind her sister's car on the circle drive. Sarah and her brood had been invited, of course. It was Jean's Golden Birthday - the thirty-first of July on which she turned thirty-one - but the real draw was the fact that Jean was bringing home a man for the first time ever. Even Ted Roberts hadn't been granted this privilege.

Sweating a little (which he chose to attribute to the heat), Scott opened the door of the Mercedes and got out, adjusting his tie and picking up the sports jacket from the back seat to don it. He was so nervous, his hands were shaking.

_You look wonderful. _

Her telepathic voice slid unexpectedly into his mind like fingers into his hand (even if she stood on the car's other side), and he glanced at her. She smiled, and looked so elegant standing there in her coral linen (Helmut Lang) pantsuit - so suited to this place - that it took his breath away.

_Just Jean_, she sent. _Just Scott. Remember?_

It made him smile back. _I'll try. _

Walking around to her side of the car, he took her hand and set it in the crook of his arm - a little trick his father had taught him once. ('Don't stick out your elbow like an oaf and expect the girl to grab it. You take her hand with your free one and wrap it under your arm.') Jean had always liked such small courtesies, perhaps because he respected her enough that they couldn't be misconstrued as patronizing.

As they approached the door, it opened to reveal John Grey in slacks and a golf shirt, and Scott felt overdressed. "Come in, come in," he said, kissing his daughter -"Happy Birthday" - then shaking Scott's hand. "Why don't you get out of the noose," he said, tapping the base of his throat to indicate Scott's tie. "It's just a family dinner, and it's summer - too hot for that." But it was said in a friendly way, and he opened the door wider to let them enter. Another man had come into the foyer beyond and he gave Jean a polite kiss on the cheek as John said, "Paul, this is Jean's friend, Scott Summers. Scott, this is my son-in-law, Paul Bailey."

Scott shook the hand of the other man, as tall as Jean's father, but wider both in chest and girth. He, too, wore casual clothes. "Pleased to meet you," Paul said. He seemed more reserved, if not specifically unfriendly. "Sarah's in the kitchen with Mom."

"Mom's cooking?" Jean asked.

"Oh, yeah. Any excuse," but it wasn't meant viciously - Scott didn't think - and the other man ambled away back down the hall into the bowels of the house. Scott glanced at Jean.

_One of my mother's hobbies,_ she explained. _Gourmet cooking. She and my sister took some classes; it's the current rage, I think. Another thing I'm afraid I'm not up on. Mom says the only way I can cook is over a Bunsen burner. _

Scott smiled at that because it was true, even while - now - it wasn't.

John watched them, hands on hips, perhaps sensing, instinctually, that he was missing something. "Sorry, Daddy," Jean said, looping her arm through his and drawing him off into a formal living room; Scott trailed, tugging off his tie as he went (and glad to be rid of it). "I was explaining to Scott about Mom's cooking."

"Ah," he replied. "Isn't there some telepathic etiquette about talking behind backs?" he asked - a teasing admonishment, yet it surprised Scott to hear him speak with such blasé acceptance. Then again, from what Jean had said, her parents had accepted her abilities with remarkably little difficulty, perhaps because her outward appearance hadn't changed, or perhaps because it was just one more thing to make their second daughter special and they'd already come to think of her so. Scott's parents may not have rejected him for being a mutant, but it had been clear, on his Thanksgiving visit, that they hadn't been sure what to make of his mutation - whether they should talk about it openly or politely pretend that nothing had changed.

Now, Jean slapped at her father playfully. "It wasn't anything secret. I was just telling him what the rest of us know."

They didn't stop in the living room, but continued on to a den beyond, or maybe a sunroom. It was full of long windows along one wall that overlooked the rear lawn with its sculpted flower beds and pool. Jean's brother-in-law was already there, along with two young children who were playing with little plastic dinosaurs on the carpet before the fireplace. When they saw Jean, both hopped up to give her a more enthusiastic hug than their father had. "Auntie Jean! Come play, come play!" They handed her two of the dinosaurs as if expecting her to join in.

And she did - with an enthusiasm that startled Scott, though neither her father nor Paul seemed to find it surprising that Jean had doffed all her reserve to get down on her belly with the kids on the rug (despite her nice pantsuit), making her dinosaurs talk in high-pitched voices as she pretended her 'meat eaters' were chasing Joey's 'plant eaters.' It was a side of Jean that Scott had neither seen nor expected, yet the kids so obviously adored her - no judgments - that she came alive for them the same way she'd come alive for him, once he'd gotten to know her. Love her and she bloomed. _You should've gone into pediatrics_, he sent.

_Second choice_, Jean replied. _Or really, third. I'd probably have done internal med if not genetics. Kids are okay but their parents can be hell. _

"So, what are you doing this summer?" dragged Scott's attention back from Jean. The brother-in-law had asked him a question.

"The school has kids all year, so we run a summer camp for them. It keeps me busy."

"They're all mutants?"

It wasn't rude or condemnatory, but rather the kind of question one poses when fishing for something to say, only half-interested and a little awkward. When Scott answered in the affirmative, he went on, "How many students do you have?"

"Thirteen enrolled now, and three - no four - scheduled to arrive new in the fall."

"And you teach math?" There was just an edge to it, but more of disbelief than disapproval, as if Paul Bailey couldn't imagine why anyone would want such a job. Then again, it wouldn't have been Scott's first choice, either.

"Math and physics," he said. "Hank - Henry McCoy - will be teaching chemistry and biology, and computers, and the professor will teach English, history and general humanities."

"Charles and I collaborated on the history a bit," John said, then, "Can I get you a drink, Scott?" He pointed to the sidebar. "Or there's beer in the fridge."

"I'll take a little vodka, Dad," Paul said as John rose to fix drinks, and Scott, unsure, glanced at Jean. She sent, _It's perfectly fine to opt for a beer, hon. _So Scott opted for a beer - he didn't much care for hard drinks - and the conversation passed into a discussion of the Bailey law firm while Scott listened (all he knew about lawyers were bad jokes), and Jean played with the children on the floor. The voices of women floated in from the kitchen and late afternoon sun fell golden through the wide windows, making the velvet curtains glow. Scott wished he knew what color they were. At one point, as if as a polite afterthought, Paul turned to ask Scott if there were any lawyers in his family.

"Not that I'm aware of."

"Your father's in business, then?"

Jean had rolled onto her side to look up even as Scott said, "No. He's retired air force, actually. Lieutenant colonel."

"Oh, really? I got to see Harvard play them last year."

It took Scott three breaths to make the connection from the service itself to the Air Force Academy and football, then he said, "He didn't go to Colorado. He got a field commission in Vietnam and they put him through school so he could fly the Blackbird - the SR-71 - during the Cold War."

The room came to a full stop until John Grey deftly changed the subject even as Jean's sister stepped in to call them to dinner. The shuffle of movement gave Jean an opportunity to take Scott's hand, her fore- and middle fingers hooking through his last two. Tension buzzed in him. _Just be yourself, _she sent as they passed through the kitchen door into the domain of Elaine Grey.

As irritated and insecure as Elaine could make her feel, Jean also knew that - deep down - her mother loved her. It had been Elaine who'd fought to see that her comatose daughter had been given the best of care, and it had been Elaine who'd pushed John until he'd exhausted all avenues, and thus had stumbled over one Dr. Charles F. Xavier. She was a mother tigress, and if Jean sometimes hated her, she also adored her, envied her, and wished she had the same fortitude. And it was in small things - such as a whole day spent cooking - that Jean was reminded how Elaine cared. Like Scott, the measure of Elaine's affection showed better in what she did rather than in what she said. Now, Jean hugged her, conflicts momentarily forgotten in the cotton coziness of a child's love for her mother, then she pulled away, turning to Scott. Caution and wariness had stitched his mouth tight. If Elaine was a tigress, Scott was a lion. "You remember Scott," Jean said.

"Yes," Elaine said non-committally.

Scott inclined his head, polite but still watchful. "Thanks for having me."

"Jean insisted."

Jean rolled her eyes. It wasn't a slap, not really, but the words made it clear that he was there on sufferance and Jean's nostalgic affection twisted instantly into irritation. "Come on," she said, dragging Scott off to the great walnut dining table before worse could occur.

Dinner extravagance showed in the cuisine, not the cutlery, for which Scott was grateful. Elaine served watercress salad first, then perfectly braised lamb, new potatoes, and asparagus in a peanut sauce, all followed by baked Brie and a British pudding of cream and sugared violets. Conversation meandered, turning first to Jean's upcoming ER rotation. "Isn't there a way to substitute something else? It's not as if you'll actually be _doing_ emergency medicine," Sarah said.

"Every doctor could, at some point, wind up doing some emergency medicine," Jean told her sister, "even if not formally. It's a bad rotation to skip."

"That's true," John agreed, "but we don't want you to push yourself." No one brought up the events of March specifically; implication was enough.

"I'll be _fine_, Daddy," Jean said in reply.

The twins had finished eating and now fled the table (and the adults) as conversation veered towards Bard's search for a new dean in the Division of Social Studies. John Grey was the leading candidate, but as always when an internal nomination had been put forth, issues of fairness had to be addressed, and the final appointment was still hanging. The Greys, Scott learned, were an old academic family and could boast one college president, one head of surgery at a teaching hospital, and now John, department head and probable new dean. This both intrigued and intimidated him, as he was the first in his family to attempt a graduate degree. Yet academia had permeable boundaries, and quickness of wit meant much. From Jean's perspective, Scott had little to worry about.

It was, in fact, John Grey who first brought up the issue of Scott's continuing education. Perhaps Jean should have expected that, but it caught her by surprise nonetheless. Beyond Paul's awkward attempts to be polite in the den, her family had mostly ignored Scott, Elaine by design and the others because he kept quiet. Now, her father turned directly to him and asked what plans he had to finish graduate school.

Startled, Scott pulled in his chin. "Well, I need at least a year for the application process," he said. John merely nodded and speared potatoes, waiting for Scott to continue, and encouraged, he launched into details, growing increasing animated. "My research field is Mayan technology and warfare. Fred - the guy I was studying under at Berkeley - was a student of John Farmer, who organized the Xochicalco Mapping Project. He got a National Geographic award for it last year, but it's in central Mexico - which isn't Mayan. John would probably take me for Fred's sake if I could get accepted, and Mark Waters is in the same department. He's doing digs at Tikal - which _is_ Mayan - so it might be a good choice, plus I'd have an in."

John was nodding as Scott spoke and Jean knew Scott had made points for his enthusiasm and his knowledge of the field. "Where are Farmer and Waters, Scott?"

"Oh, sorry - Penn State."

John coughed, pretending that a bite of potato had gone down the wrong way. Paul was less polite, rolling his eyes openly, but Scott didn't seem to notice, caught up in his subject and hoping to impress John by judicious academic name-dropping. Alas, the names that registered around the table were all the wrong ones.

"I don't want to go far from New York if I can avoid it," Scott was saying, "but if Linda Schele were still alive, it'd be worth heading to Austin -"

"Austin, _Texas?_" Sarah interrupted and Jean winced even as Scott nodded, cheerfully oblivious.

"That's right - UT, Austin. Schele was, like, the _mother_ of Mayan archaeology. She did more for the field than anybody else this century. She wrote _Blood of Kings_ and a half dozen other things. Now Donald Frye is at SMU, down in Dallas, and he worked with her some. I seriously considered going there, but people closer to the northeast could direct my thesis just as easily."

"I should think so. _Texas!_" Sarah blurted.

Scott frowned, both puzzled and annoyed by the derision in Sarah's voice, and Jean glanced frantically at her father. John understood. As a scholar, he was well aware that leading research in a field wasn't always to be found at ivy league schools, yet John also knew the value of the name on the pigskin and wasn't inclined to encourage Scott towards either Texas or the wilds of central Pennsylvania. "So what other schools are you considering up here - besides Penn State?"

"Well, Jeremy Conroy and Toni Farley are at U-Penn," Scott said. John nodded in approval but Scott dismissed them both with, "Unfortunately, they're more interested in settlement patterns, so U-Penn isn't high on my list. Then there's Ken Follett at Buffalo and that's a possibility, but he's only an assistant prof - no tenure, and I'm not getting into _that_ boat again."

John Grey had turned slightly pale at the mention of Buffalo, even as Scott barreled on, "Albany'd be better," which only deepened John's expression of alarm. "There's a whole little cadre of Mesoamericanists up there, including a student of Schele's -"

"What about _other_ schools?" Elaine interrupted, having taken in the clash of academic priorities with predatory, lynx-like amusement. "Say - Yale, Harvard, Columbia, Princeton, Dartmouth, Cornell, Brown?" The seven crown jewels of the northeast. "Surely any of _those_ would be better choices."

"Not necessarily," Scott said, a bit testily. "Martha Myrer's at Yale, but she's in art history, and for Mesoamerica, Brown, Dartmouth and Princeton aren't even on the radar" - which brought startled glances from the rest, to hear schools founded in the 1700s rejected so cavalierly. "Now, Bill Fash's at Harvard and he's got a dig in Copán" - Elaine's eyes hooded as if to say, _That's better_, until Scott added - "but it's not like _I'll_ ever get into Harvard."

"Why not?" Paul asked with a banal presumption. "I went there. It's sure as hell better than Penn State, or _Albany_. Good Lord. Your poor parents would never live it down if you got a graduate degree from astate university_." _

Scott's mouth dropped open a little, foolish with surprise and sudden comprehension. Then both shame and anger scalded his ears, and Jean could read all too well what he was thinking - that his parents had never gone to a private school, and the only way he'd afforded Berkeley had been through a scholarship and Xavier's generosity. The class divide yawned, creating a chasm between her family's expectations and Scott's own prospects, and beneath the table, Jean slipped her hand onto his thigh squeezing. "Scott could get into Harvard if he wanted to," she said with quiet certainty, garnering a startled look from him. Undaunted, she played her Ace of Academic Spades: "He got a 760 in the quantitative and a 780 in the logic on his GREs."

That shut up the rest of the dinner table_. _Scott was blushing; he knew his scores were good but was unaware - having little for comparison - just _how_ good. John Grey had almost dropped his fork. "A 760 and a 780? Good God, what were your verbals?"

"620," Scott replied.

It was a solid if unremarkable score, and John nodded. "Not bad, and math majors usually ace the quantitative part of GREs - but your logic score . . ." He trailed off and shook his head. "That's a rare feat."

"Thanks," Scott said, softly.

"So," John continued, "Tell me a little more about your research interests." And Jean knew that Scott had leapt whatever bar her father had set in his own mind, at least for now. Elaine appeared displeased, Sarah appeared nonplussed, but at least Paul refrained from further digs. Scott promptly lumbered off into a detailed explanation of Teotihuacan warfare and it's probable influence on the Maya, which bored everyone but John. Even Jean had heard it all before (about twenty times). After the dessert, the two men departed the dining room, still discussing Mesoamerican technology, and Jean was left to field the disapproval of the rest.

Her mother wasted no time. "I hope you get over this tawdry little fascination with slumming quickly. Warren Worthington won't wait forever while you wise up." And she rose from the table, taking a couple of dishes back into the kitchen.

Sarah and Paul had turned to gape at Jean. "_Warren Worthington_!" Sarah said even as Paul asked, "_He's_ interested? My God, what a catch, Jeannie!"

Jean rolled her eyes, both for Scott's sake _and_ Warren's. "Warren's not a fish, Paul. He's a person. And a _friend_ - but that's all. I was never dating him."

"So Mom's exaggerating again?" Sarah asked as she picked up her own plate and the twins' as well.

It would no doubt have been easier had Jean simply agreed, yet pride interfered. Sarah could never resist underscoring any failing in Jean because she'd been unfavorably compared once too often, and Jean, in turn, resented the constant attempts to humiliate her. So now, she said, "No, Warren was interested. But I wasn't. I made my choice; he's talking to Daddy in the library."

Sarah glared back a moment, then shook her head as Paul rose (but without picking up any dishes) and headed out to keep an eye on the twins. "He seems like a nice enough chap," Paul said, pausing in the doorway, "but, well, I don't think he'll really fit in, Jean."

"Fit in with _what_?" Jean snapped back.

Paul didn't bother to reply but Sarah pursed her lips as she circled the table, picking up plates and stacking them. "Don't be dense," she said when her husband had left them. "Can you imagine him at a Patrons' Society party? Or New Years up at Montgomery Place? You don't want to embarrass Mom and Dad, do you?"

"It's myself I don't want to embarrass," Jean replied, watching Sarah. "It's myself I have to look in the eye in the mirror. I'm tired of lying just to make Mom happy."

Her sister breathed out, exasperated. "You always were the _selfish_ one."

"What's _that_ supposed to mean?"

"Everything in this house has to revolve around _you_ - the drama of Jean Elizabeth! Me, me, me - that's all you think about."

"It is not!"

"Yes, it is! 'It's me I have to look in the eye in the mirror . . .' Oh, please! You just want an excuse, and you don't give a damn if your antics with that ditzy pretty boy make Mom and Dad a laughing stock. Why don't you try thinking of someone _else_ for a change?" She stalked out, leaving her sister in the empty, echoing dining room as shadows lengthened on a summer evening. Jean stared at the hardening remains of her birthday pudding and let the tears slide unchecked down either side of her nose, stinging her conscience.

"It's not true."

She jerked her head around to peer into the hallway leading back towards the front of the house. Scott emerged from the shadows. His hands were in his pockets and he was trying to look casual, as if he hadn't been spying, but there was a muscle jumping in his jaw. He grew quiet when deeply angry, and his soft rage spilled now into the corners of the room, stiff like the cream. "You're no more selfish than anybody else," he said as he strolled over to where she still sat. His voice was low. "Don't buy into the shit she's handing you, Jean."

_But she's right, _Jean sent, _I wasn't thinking about them. _

"So?" Scott asked, "They aren't thinking about you, either. Don't let them dictate your life." And that, Jean thought, was the voice of the boy who'd gone to Berkeley in the face of his father's disapproval. He'd always been stronger than her that way. Reaching down, he tilted her face up and used his thumb to wipe away the tears, then sucked at the dampness as if he could ingest her sorrow and transform it. "You're the one who told _me,_ 'We'll show them all we're not a mistake,' remember?" She nodded, but thought back to his uncertainty when they'd first arrived; this was quite the change. Yet Scott responded to open opposition by pushing back, and her family would have intimidated him better if they'd kept quiet and let his own insecurities undermine him.

He'd bent to rest his hands on the back of her chair, pinning her between. Drawing breath, he hesitated, then spoke as if telling a tremendous secret: "_I love you_."

Startled, she laughed and it drew an answering smile from him, mischievous and dimpled. Just Jean. Just Scott. Just this thing they had where he could make her smile, make her believe, and she could make him dare, make him persevere. In the end, everything else fell away as rather irrelevant, really, lost in the shadows outside the magnesium spotlight on the stage of their affection. This was their play and they'd finish it.

* * *

><p>"So how did it go?"<p>

"You mean aside from the fact that I want to strangle her mother, draw and quarter her sister, and flush the brother-in-law down a toilet? I guess it went fine."

"Ah." Ororo seated herself beside Scott in the shade of a tree, where they could keep a watchful eye on the kids, but the wilting heat of early August acted as a better deterrent than two sets of adult eyes. No one had much energy, and even Scott, usually immune to the sun's hammer, wasn't immune to choking humidity. He'd taken off his shirt and wadded it up beside him; Ororo glanced at it with amusement. "You will give the girls a heart attack," she said.

"Huh?"

Leaning forward, she plucked up the discarded shirt, shaking it in front of his nose. He shrugged with studied disconcern, but his lips twitched. "You could take yours off, too," he said, "then the boys could have a heart attack."

Jaw dropping, she smacked him with the shirt. "Pig!"

Arms up to fend her off, he laughed, but was also secretly relieved to have her back on speaking terms with him, even if he had to yell 'uncle' twice before she quit abusing him. He leaned back on his elbows then. A blue jay was chattering above, and sunlight fell through the leaves onto the grass in a polka dot pattern of light and shadow. Gnats buzzed, annoying, and Rusty was challenging Julio to hit him with a water balloon. Scott and Ro sat in a companionable quiet. "So are you ready to become the math teacher, in the fall?" she asked at last.

"I thought I already was the math teacher?"

"Officially."

"I suppose."

"I am thinking that, perhaps, I shall take an education degree, too."

Scott glanced at the back of her head, which was all he could see from his angle. "What would you want to teach?"

"History, I am thinking."

Scott nodded. "We could use that," he said.

* * *

><p>A light sleeper, Scott woke when the bed rocked. Jean was getting up, and he'd anticipated this; tomorrow was her first day back in the ER. He heard the soft crack of a door opening, but it came from the direction of the veranda, not the hall. Rolling onto his back, he reached for the night-stand and his glasses there, then pulled off the flax blindfold he slept in now (because it was more comfortable than goggles). Glasses in place, he raised up on his elbows. She was outside, wrapped in thin silk and silhouetted by house lights through the paneled glass doors. "Damn," he whispered, glancing at the clock - a few minutes past one in the morning - and he wondered how long she'd lain awake before rising. Throwing off the covers, he got up to pad after her. She jumped when the French doors opened. "I didn't mean to wake you," she said.<p>

"I know. But I wish you had."

She shrugged in reply and he slipped his arms around her waist from behind, resting his chin on her shoulder. "I'll be fine," she said, her voice brittle with irritation.

"I'm sure you will." But he didn't let her go and she snorted at him. Then a moment later, she gasped when his palm drifted up to rub one nipple.

"You think that's going to distract me?"

"I don't know. Is it?" His other hand had found the other nipple and he felt her press back against him almost instinctually.

"Men think sex is the answer to everything."

"It's not?"

Laughing, a little breathless, she was pressing her ass into his crotch now and he rubbed against her, the hour and his exhaustion transforming his worry into lust. Twisting in his arms, she kissed him and reached up to remove his glasses as he turned his head aside. Then she sucked at his jawline, his neck. The night air was cool in contrast to her body and he could hear the wet sounds her mouth made on his skin as her tongue slid over his bare chest, flicking against flat nipples. He hissed, putting out a hand blindly for something to rest his weight against. The glass door, it felt like, but sensation had all concentrated in his crotch, heavy and pulsing. Voice hoarse, he said, "Let's go back in." She disengaged and took his hand. "Can I have my glasses back?" he asked.

"No," she replied.

"Jean . . ."

But she only dragged him through the room and shoved him down lightly on their bed, kissing his face again. He nearly yelled when he felt her lips cross his eyelashes. "_Don't do that!" _He went weak all through from anxiety, his desire drowned. "_Dammit,_ don't do that."

"Shhh," she said and pulled him towards her, pushing his face into her shoulder.

"Please -"

"Shhh," she said again, then, "Kiss me."

He wasn't sure what this was about, what game she was playing, but he got hold of his own fears and did as she asked. "Why are you doing this?" he asked between kisses.

"Because I like the feel of your bare face." Then she slipped free to lie back on the bed, thighs spread as she maneuvered him between. The insistent bulge of his erection pressed into the damp heat of her crotch and the smell of sex was making him crazy. He rocked against her.

"What'd you do with my glasses?"

"I'm not telling."

"Jean!"

"Shhh."

This was her particular fetish, to see him without the glasses. A part of him understood it, despite his anxieties. She was _curious_. But just now, she was pulling his head to her breast and after a moment's hesitation, he obliged, mouthing her nipples, drunk on wanting. There was a rawness to this, without anything in the way, a freedom, and he could almost pretend he was a normal man.

For Jean, it was all about the crisp flavor of danger, the awesome power she held in her arms, proving she wasn't a coward. But even more, it was about trust. She needed to know that he trusted her to trust him. Complicated. Yet trust was important because so few offered it to a telepath. Scott always had - in everything but this. He'd trusted her enough to live with a permanent link in his head, but he hadn't trusted his bare face against her bare chest, and for some reason, that last resistance had _bothered_ her.

Now, he raised himself up on his arms so that he could reach her breast more easily, and it was less the sensation of his tongue circling her areola that excited her than the feel of his nose and brows pressed into her skin - and what that meant. No metal, no quartz. Only his eyelids. After a moment, he moved his head sideways, intending to give some attention to the other breast, but she stopped him, holding his face against her sternum, his nose right over her heart. His muscles tensed, then abruptly relaxed and he sank against her, letting her embrace him as her fingers slipped through his hair. They lay that way until her breathing evened out in sleep, then he rolled onto his back with a sigh. He was still hard, and eyes shut, he slipped a hand under the waistband of his briefs to grip himself and finish. She needed to rest. He bit his lips when he came so he wouldn't wake her.

* * *

><p>The new year began with nineteen students rather than seventeen, and Xavier's finally felt like a proper school, having shed the awkwardness of numbers too large for intimacy, but too small for momentum, and for the first time, classes were broken down into grades. Three full-time teachers were listed on the brochure, plus Ororo, who continued her studies at a local private college and acted as their part-time "assistant." Occasionally Warren turned up to lead a particular class, but he and Scott kept their distance, edging around each other like dogs who preferred the peace of a good fence. Warren was more friendly with Jean, who politely pretended that she didn't know about his public quarrel with Scott in the dining hall, back in March. Almost half a year had passed in any case, and the new students took her affair with their math teacher as a fixed article of mansion life, while the older students had stopped gossiping finally sometime in late July. Scott and Jean had passed, almost overnight, from the subject of titillating speculation into a boring old couple. The fact that they'd been friends for such a long time (and had the privacy of their own room for intimate trysts) infused their public interaction with a platonic familiarity that discouraged prurient interest. Not that Jean was around the mansion much during the day, in any case, with her current rotation in the ER - and there were several nights a week that she wasn't around, too. Scott discovered that he really didn't <em>like<em> sleeping alone, now that he'd gotten used to another body next to his.

At least this time her rotation passed more calmly than the first, perhaps because it came at the end of her first year and she'd learned confidence, or perhaps because the rest of her life had settled into routine.

That changed in September.

* * *

><p>Scott dropped by his office to pick up some papers before his first class only to find his phone ringing off the hook. Shoving the door open, he grabbed for it. "This is Scott Summers."<p>

"Why is no one answering the phones?" It was Francesco, sounding both annoyed and panicked.

"I don't know," Scott said. "Breakfast just ended and everybody's headed to class. You caught me by chance. What is it?"

"Warren is not answering his phone, either, not at his flat nor his cell phone, and his secretary - which he at least _has_ - says he is not at the office yet."

Scott ignored the secretary remark. "What do you need with Warren?" And what did he need with Warren that meant he'd call the mansion as a second resort?

"He must stay home today."

Scott glanced at his watch: eight-oh-seven. "I think it's a little late for that, Frank."

"Tell him to go home! Call him and tell him to go home! It is easier for you there than for me. Tell him to go home!"

Grabbing a chair, Scott sat down. He knew that tone. "What'd you see?"

"Only flashes. There is no time to talk. _Find him. _Tell him he must go home."

Annoyed with the crystal-ball babbling, Scott nearly shouted, "WHAT flashes?"

"A red sky. Sirens. A woman covered in ash with a broken heel, walking down a street. A great cloud of gray smoke turning over cars. Fires. Pieces of a plane stretched across a field. A tall building falling, but what building, I cannot say. And American flags everywhere. How much use is that? Now do not waste time - find Warren and tell him to go home. Something is going to happen." He hung up.

Scott stared at the humming receiver, then disconnected and dialed Warren's cell phone. Perhaps he'd just had it off when Frank had tried earlier, because he answered now. "Worthington."

"It's Scott. Frank called here. He says you need to go home. Something's going to happen."

"My, that's . . . informative. I don't suppose you could be a little _more_ vague, could you?"

Scott ground his teeth. "You _know_ how Frank's visions work. Where are you?"

"In the hallway outside my office door, actually." And he lowered his voice because there were others in the hall, too. "Look, Scott, I have two important conference calls today. I can't just take off because Frank has some premonition of disaster that has nothing to do with me."

"It has everything to do with you - he tried calling you first, and only called here because he couldn't catch you. It's you he's worried about." Maybe Frank hadn't been able to see specifics, but he'd certainly been focused on Warren. "Get out of Battery Park. Go home and do your calls from there."

Warren pondered that while people passed, hurrying to a meeting, an interview, an office. He had faith in few things, but Frank Placido was one of them. "All right, fine, but I need to pick up some papers and documents. I'll call you when I get home."

"Don't call me; call Frank. I'll talk to you later."

When Summers had hung up, Warren folded his phone and slipped it into his pocket, then entered his suite. These weren't the main offices of Worthington Enterprises by any means; they occupied only half the fifty-first floor of World Trade Center One. But Warren's father had decided a branch at the center of New York's financial heartbeat would be convenient, and had put his son in charge of it under the watchful eye of one of his senior staff, Alan Hodge. Riding with training wheels, Warren had called it.

Fortunately, Hodge wasn't there yet; he wouldn't arrive until nine or ten, and Warren's receptionist approached to hand him a good dozen pink message slips. He glanced through them. Half were from Italy, and that, more than Scott's call, decided him firmly. Heading into his office, he grabbed his current files and shoved them into his briefcase, then walked back out. "Ladies and gentlemen," he called, getting their startled attention. "We're going to breakfast - my treat."

His staff stared, obviously wondering what had prompted this beneficence, but the rich were allowed their little eccentricities and Warren was relying on that to cover his real reasons. He figured that whatever had made it dangerous for him to be downtown made it just as dangerous for them. "Come on," he said, clapping his hands, "find a stopping place." Even so, it took fifteen minutes to herd them out and down the hall to the elevators, which were all in use.

Now that he'd committed himself, Warren wanted out of the building as quickly as possible, and might have suggested the stairs, but even Frank's warnings couldn't overcome the ridiculousness of taking fifty flights, so he waited with his staff, bouncing a bit on the balls of his feet. The harness that constrained his wings chafed more than usual today. "Why breakfast?" one of the clerks asked. Tom Vincent.

"It's a nice day," Warren replied, because he had nothing better. "And I don't know - it's Tuesday?" He grinned. "I didn't get any breakfast this morning."

A few of the secretaries shook their heads, but smiled. Warren doubted they minded a morning off, but he hoped Alan Hodge didn't show up to an empty office, or he'd have some explaining to do. He glanced at his watch. Eight thirty-nine. Maybe this'd be a day that Hodge arrived at ten. "This better not be a joke, Frank," Warren muttered under his breath. But Francesco never joked about visions.

The elevators were slow to arrive and one had just opened when the entire building surged suddenly under their feet, knocking them into walls or to the floor. "What the hell was that!" someone shouted - Tom Vincent again.

"I don't know!" Warren said. "Stay here!" And he raced for the nearest office, threw open the door, and nearly collided with a frantic woman running _out_. "What's going on?"

"I don't know! Something hit the top of the tower!"

Warren glanced out a window. He could see glass, a blizzard of papers, and large metal pieces raining down. Slamming the door, he ran back towards his people. They had white faces, and Peggy, his receptionist, seemed on the verge of a panic. "Get to the stairs. Go!" Warren pushed them in front of him. All the offices were emptying now, creating a mass exodus of frightened people, and a backup outside the stairwell. Strangely, no one pushed or shoved. Someone was sobbing. More speculated - a gas explosion? A helicopter clipping the roof? Another bombing like the one in '93? No one seemed to know.

The stairwell was narrow, and only two people could go down abreast. A design flaw, Warren thought, lips twisting at the irony of noticing that now. People jostled him and he could smell sweat from nerves. The lower they went, the hotter it got from so many bodies crammed into such a small space, and sometimes the human traffic flow simply stopped. Still, no one panicked until water started pouring down the stairs from above; fortunately, the sardine-tin packing kept anyone from doing anything truly foolish, and the majority kept a cool head. Warren could hear Vincent and the reigning office matriarch, Lorraine Harris, talking calmly to the people around them. Warren had always hated Lorraine for her snippiness and hauteur, but he loved her now. She was keeping Peggy from going to pieces. "We're at the thirtieth floor; not much further!" Her voice was loud over the rushing water.

Smoke was seeping into the well in addition to the water, and at the twenty-seventh floor, the traffic flow stopped again as people were jostled and firemen starting racing _up_. Their faces were haunted and they were panting. When people demanded to know what had happened, they didn't reply, just told them to keep moving down and evacuate the building. Despite even less space, movement picked up.

* * *

><p>Ever since Frank's morning call, Scott had been unsettled, the hair a bit raised at the back of his neck, so when he heard feet patter down the hall outside his class and Ororo's voice shouting, he broke off instantly and ran to open the door. "What?"<p>

"The World Trade Center's been hit!" she replied over her shoulder as she yanked open the door to the professor's office across the hall. "The World Trade Center's been hit by an airplane!"

Scott sprinted for the den and turned on the television where a Channel 4 news bulletin was announcing the collision. It sounded as if it had been an accident. Then the picture came in, showing one of the twin towers burning - the north tower. Warren's tower. "Fuck!" Scott shouted, not caring that kids were arriving in the den behind him. He dropped down on a couch so that others could see.

"What happened? What's going on? Did a plane really hit the tower?" the kids were chattering, torn between morbid excitement and simple confusion.

"Be quiet and listen!" Hank snapped, joining Scott on the couch; it rocked under his weight. The news was giving the time of the collision as 8:45 - about half an hour after Scott had talked to Warren. "What floor is Warren's?" Hank asked, his voice hollow and soft.

"Fifty-first," Scott replied, then leapt to his feet and headed for a phone, but the lines were all busy. He tried over and over, every few minutes, until behind him, Jubilee and Doug both _screamed_. Whipping his head about, he watched live feed of a second plane hitting the south tower. Time froze, and his breath with it. Then there was a burst of flame, and smoke and debris shot out, fascinating like fireworks, and as terrible as Judgment Day.

"Ohmygodohmygod_ohmygod_!" and "Oh, shit, oh, Jesus!" came from the kids, along with other exclamations rather less articulate. Rendered mute, Scott just dropped the receiver.

* * *

><p>It still took thirty-five minutes for Warren and the other evacuees to get to ground level. The upper lobby was filled with rescue workers. "Out, out, out!" they were saying, practically shoving people through the doors that led to the bridge across to the World Financial Center on the other side of West Side Highway. Freed now from the stairwell, people finally began to grasp the full magnitude of what had occurred. Windows were blown out of their steel frames and the lobby was partially charred. A couple of the elevator doors had been blasted open, apparently from the force of its car coming down, and all Warren could think was that they'd almost gotten on one. He began to shake. Outside, they could see glass still raining down like hail, and paper was everywhere, along with concrete rubble and bits of twisted metal. A lot of rubble and metal.<p>

And bodies. There were bodies, or what was left of them after falling so far, some charred. Warren gagged, and tried not to look. People around him were sobbing in fear, relief, horror - a rich cocktail of emotion - while other faces showed no expression at all. There was no expression for this. Some people walked in circles, some ran, aimless. Many were yelling for friends or people they knew, or had a phone to their ears. Warren pulled out his own cell and opened it, but never dialed. He followed the flood across the street, just one more person headed for the esplanade along the Hudson River, and it suddenly didn't matter who he was or how much money he had. It mattered that he was still moving, still alive, and not a body on the pavement. His skin stung but it was only much later that he learned he'd been pelted by bits of glass and concrete that had scratched his face and hands. There was smoke on his suit and his soaked shoes made squishing sounds as he walked.

Pausing finally, he looked behind him. Both towers were on fire, the smoke roiling out gray and black into a quartz-blue sky. Tower One, the north, had a gaping hole near the top and Tower Two, the south, had one more toward the middle. He stood stock still, staring, as people ran past. That was when he saw someone leap from a window above the hole in Tower Two, wingless but arms outstretched, her hair and skirt whipping behind her. The sight of it knocked him to his knees, and inside the cage across his back, his own wings fluttered. Useless. He bowed over and banged his forehead on the sidewalk.

* * *

><p>The first reports came over the dispatch at the main desk of the ER. They were confusing, but news traveled fast, and as more reports came in, Columbia Presbyterian prepared for Disaster Response along with every other hospital in Manhattan.<p>

But the rush of ambulances never came. Doctors and nurses stood about with nothing to do. Some people did trickle in off the street, and a few more in an ambulance here or there, but not enough, not enough. Like everyone else in the ER, Jean knew that a lack of casualties meant a higher death toll. So she waited with the rest, and never noticed when her shift should have ended at ten. No one thought of leaving. At one point, she became dimly aware of the professor's mind-touch in her head, not interfering, merely ascertaining that she was there, and safe.

Early on in the first hour, a few nurses and doctors glanced at her nervously. They'd heard stories of the previous March. But she didn't waver as she moved up and down the hall, tending the few who'd made it this far - mostly for cuts and bruises and smoke inhalation - and as time passed, the staff ceased to think about it. There were too many other things to think about, and faces were sketched with concern. Jean caught bright flashes of worry and a hushed litany of names: family and friends. (_And what of Warren, what of Warren?_) Once in a spare moment, she tried to call Scott at the mansion, but couldn't get through. Yet he was in Westchester. North. That was safe, wasn't it? (_And what of Warren?_)

Jean went back to her duty.

* * *

><p>The mansion phone lines had been busy almost since the second tower had been hit as students had called parents or parents had called students, when they could get through the clogged relays; Hank had even brought in his laptop to offer email as an option, slow as that was. Scott's maternal grandmother had phoned, wanting to know how he was (she lived in Brooklyn) - and a complete stranger had called, too, a Ham Radio contact of his father's. Chris Summers had assumed the worst and gone straight for his radio. Any excuse, Scott thought, amused and exasperated, but he told the man he was fine. Yet neither Warren nor Jean had made it through, and when he was called to the phone for a third time, Scott nearly leapt for the receiver. "Hello!"<p>

"Yo, Slim! You're okay!" EJ's voice this time. The relief in it was palpable.

"I'm fine." Scott tried to hide his disappointment; he didn't want EJ to think he didn't want to talk to him, but - right then - he didn't want to talk to him.

"I had to call. I had to check on you."

"I'm fine," Scott said again, eyes turning back to the TV screen. He couldn't seem to look away for long, even while he didn't want to see. "Jean's at the hospital, but she's all right, too, the professor says. Everyone's all right. Except for Warren. We don't know about Warren. The professor is trying to locate him."

"The blond angel boy?"

"Yeah. He had an office in the north tower."

"Fuck." EJ paused. "The news is all over. Everything's stopped out here. People are hanging out in front of a TV. A plane hit the Pentagon and another went down in PA, they're sayin'."

"I know." It was dull. He'd spent all his anger, earlier. They'd hit the goddamn _Pentagon_, and he was still military brat enough to feel the outrage. They were baiting the bull. Just now, the news was showing loops of the second plane hitting the second tower. Over and over. Scott shut his eyes.

_If you'd been there, you could have stopped it_, he thought to himself.

EJ was still talking. "Clarice and DeeDee are over here, and Lee called, and Dad and Mom. I need to get off and start letting people know you're okay."

"All right."

"Call me, or send email, when you know something about your friend."

"All right."

EJ paused but didn't hang up, said instead, "Talk to me, man. You're not all right."

"Dammit, what do you want me to say?"

"Anything."

"I could have fucking stopped it!" he shouted, aware that the kids had twisted around to look at him. "If I'd been there, I could have stopped it!"

"How?" The question was calm.

"I could have blown the plane out of the sky!" Then he thought about how that had sounded. "It would've killed the people on it, yeah, but it would have saved the tower."

"There's a long string of 'if's attached to that, Slim."

"But I could've done it."

"Your shoulders aren't that big. Carry what fits on 'em."

Scott's jaw tightened, but four years of friendship had earned EJ the right to say that. "All those people are dead." A pause. "Warren -"

"Yeah." The word was much softer. EJ didn't add to it. There weren't enough words.

Scott turned his back on the TV and shut his eyes again, felt heat sting behind them. He could only cry with his eyes shut, and a reporter droning behind him hid the choked sound from everyone but the man on the other end of the line, almost three thousand miles away. EJ didn't speak, but he didn't hang up. After a minute or two of simple silence, Scott said, "I should get off. In case Warren manages to get through. Or Jean."

"Call me later." It wasn't an offer; it was an order.

"Okay." Scott hung up.

* * *

><p>He needed sensible shoes. Just some goddamn sensible shoes. He'd lost his tie somewhere along the Hudson and his shirt hung half open, though he didn't dare take the jacket off his back. It'd expose his wings. Yet what good had they done anyone?<p>

He thought again of the woman falling.

He wondered if he could ever fly again.

Behind him, around him, in front of him, a sea of people moved up Broadway, north out of Egypt, an exodus of suits all looking for their personal promised land. Most people had been directed west across the Brooklyn Bridge along with others on the Hudson side of downtown, but he'd resisted. He had to go north; his promised land lay in Westchester.

Even as his thoughts turned that way, he felt a brush against his mind, as light as his own feathers. _Warren? _

_Professor! _

_You're all right. Thank heavens! _

_I didn't help them_, Warren replied. It was a non sequitur, but the apology burst out of him like a rain of shattered window glass. _That woman - she jumped and I didn't catch her. I should have caught her, but I didn't think about it until I saw her jump. What good is a man with wings if he doesn't use them? _

Xavier didn't answer immediately and Warren could sense him sifting through Warren's memories to make sense of what he'd said. Finally, the professor sent,_ You did not think about it because you were in shock like everyone else. A man who has wings is still a _man_, Warren. _

_Scott would have thought of it! _

_You are not Scott. _

_No kidding! _

_It wasn't a criticism, son. Do what you can do as _Warren_. _And the touch was gone.

The terrible sound began behind him like the soft rattle of an earthquake, and dull still with shock, Warren paused to glance back. The south tower of the trade center was collapsing like a house of concrete cards, straight down into a ball of dust and smoke and fire. Around him, he could hear the sharp sounds of shock, and someone burst out weeping. Not a woman. Warren ran a dirty hand into his hair. Then he continued up Broadway as the dust boiled out of Battery Park behind them and people began to run instead of walk. Ten or fifteen minutes later, he heard the other tower go down, but he didn't bother to look, just threw away his useless briefcase.

Ahead of him, he could see an elderly woman with one broken heel; she was covered in dust and wept into her hands as she walked along with a lurching gate from her broken shoe.

"Hey," he said and caught her up, putting his arm around her. "Stop a minute." She did. He could see now that she wasn't an old woman at all; her pale blond hair had simply been covered by gray ash and there was a long gash on her dirty cheek. He picked her up.

"You can't carry me," she whispered.

"Sure, I can." Nature had given him more than the wings. He started walking again. "What's your name?"

"Felicia," she replied. "Felicia Hardy. What's yours?"

"Warren." He didn't give his last name. On a day like today, it didn't matter.

* * *

><p><strong>Notes: <strong>Linda Schele was a real Mesoamerican archaeologist who wrote the book attributed to her, although most of the other people Scott mentions in passing, including his former advisor at Berkeley, are fictional (the institutions obviously aren't). The details of 9/11 owe to a variety of sources: the first-hand accounts of Tower survivors, news reports, NYC residents whom I pestered, and my own memories. All errors are my own.


	23. Speaking to the Dead

**Warning:** End contains spoilers for X2.

* * *

><p>Henry McCoy hadn't practiced emergency medicine since his days as a resident, yet it never occurred to him that he shouldn't go into Manhattan on the afternoon of September 11th, and he was down in the med bay packing spare blood in ice when the professor found him. "I saw they'd opened lanes into the city for medical personnel," Hank said, by way of explanation. He was dressed in a white lab coat, one specially sewn to accommodate his new girth and frame, and beneath that, a 'big and tall' set of khaki slacks and a button-down shirt with a tie. And sandals. No shoes were large enough for his feet anymore.<p>

"Are you sure you wish to do this?" Xavier asked. "The hospitals have not been flooded." The unspoken corollary to this being that once the towers had gone down, there hadn't been enough survivors to flood them.

But Hank shook his head. "Doctors who've been working since the beginning should be relieved, Charles. Any pair of trained hands is needed, even blue ones."

"Where are you planning to go?"

"To Columbia. I'll send Jean back; she's been on call since yesterday morning. By this point, she's so exhausted she's more of a liability than a help."

Xavier steepled his fingers. "I'm not sure Columbia Presbyterian would be the best choice."

Startled, Hank glanced up. "Why? It was where I did my residency; I know the place."

"Yes, and it is the same emergency room to which a certain 'big blue furry man' was taken after the accident in the Hammer Building. I made no attempt to wipe memories completely, Henry. For one, it wouldn't have been very effective - too many people saw. For another, I question the ethics of such an act. I only modified as necessary, and while I'm sure there has been some turnover in the past year, I'm also sure some would remember."

Hank stared down at the cooler of blood. "So you don't think I should go out of the house?" It was both bitter and angry.

"If I'd thought that, would I have supported your decision to attend the conference in Atlanta?"

"People asked questions, even there."

"Of course they did. Not only did the accident make the general news, the mystery of it persisted in the medical community for months."

"People still think Bruce is to blame." Henry looked up. "What really happened? You've never said."

"I've never said because I have no idea. From what little I do know, I think it was an accident." One eyebrow went up. "They do occur, you know, and if I understood the machine specifications correctly, even something as simple as failing to fasten the containment cylinder firmly could have had catastrophic results. The longer something dangerous is used - and used without mishap - the more lax people grow."

Charles kept to himself what Francesco Placido had foreseen. Henry, usually so quick with a deduction, was also fundamentally straightforward and it had never occurred to him that Frank might have known but chosen not to speak. The 'greater good' was difficult to accept when faced with the dramatic results of it in a mirror. A part of Frank would never forgive himself for his choice, and Xavier thought that punishment enough.

Charles also kept to himself the contents of a certain letter that he'd received three months ago from an old friend. It had included a clipping taken from an English-language newspaper in the little Cree village of Chisasabi, Quebec on the eastern shore of James Bay off the Hudson. The town supported a thriving summer tourism industry, and the paper spoke of a 'great green wendigo' whom locals claimed was at least seven feet tall. The creature reputedly ran from groups, but if cornered, had a habit of pulling up small pines and flinging them. At least one family of overly curious campers had been forced to abandon their crushed tents. The reporter, a tribal member disinclined to join the hysteria, had concluded his column with the tongue in cheek remark: "If he is a wendigo, he hasn't actually _eaten_ anyone yet. Maybe our white urban tourists just can't recognize a grizzly when they see it?"

Along the edge of the clipping, Erik Lehnsherr had written, _"Weisst du zufällig__ irgend etwas ü__ber grosse grü__ne Monster, Charles? Oder ü__ber grosse blaue?" I don't suppose you would know anything about big green monsters, would you, Charles? Or big blue ones, either? _Then, in English, he'd added, "Fascinating machine that Dr. Banner built. I'd love to see the schematics."

Henry was saying, "I need to do something, professor. I can't just sit here twiddling my thumbs."

"I know," Xavier said, quietly. "I'm not objecting to your decision to go into the city. I simply think it wiser if you offer your assistance at a different hospital. Perhaps St. Vincent or Beth Israel?"

Hank sighed. "That's assuming either lets me in the door. They don't know me."

"Under the circumstances, I think your initial comment quite likely correct. Any trained pair of hands, whatever their color, will be welcome - particularly a trained pair that is bringing blood supplies."

"Jean still needs to come home."

"I'll send Scott after her."

* * *

><p>Emergencies, Scott Summers could handle, but the controlled blood letting of formal medicine turned his stomach. Thus, when he entered the ER of Columbia Presbyterian, he wasn't sure what he'd face and steeled himself to witness triage in the hallways. In fact, he faced very little. The hallway wasn't crowded with survivors, and the triage nurse was currently tending a young Hispanic boy for what looked like a bad knife gash on his arm; Scott doubted that had anything to do with the disaster in Battery Park.<p>

He was barely inside the main waiting area when Jean burst through the big, swinging doors that closed off the treatment rooms from the waiting area. She'd felt him arrive. "Scott!" He caught her as she ran forward to launch herself at him. "Oh, thank God!" Even though she'd known he hadn't been in danger, and she hadn't been in danger, on this day, there was relief enough in simply holding each other. Mortality had been brought home to everyone.

"I came to get you," he said now. "You've been here long enough."

"I can't leave - "

"Yes, you can." He pushed her away to meet her eyes. She was exhausted. And that, he thought, was when her age showed the most; twenty-two handled sleeplessness more easily than thirty-one. There were visible bags under her dark eyes and creases around her mouth that, in ten years, would be full-fledged lines. Yet he found them dear. Kissing the bridge of her nose, he said, _sotto voce_, "They're not coming, Jean. Everyone's out who's going to make it." That was hard and brutal, but she needed to take a break.

She acknowledged it with a sideways tilt of her head and a pursing of lips. "You never know - "

"Hon, _enough_ - come home." They looked at one another for a moment, then she gave a little sigh. He changed the subject. "Have you heard from Warren? The professor said - "

"He's here."

"Warren?"

"Yes. Wait a sec."

She disappeared back behind the doors, emerging a minute later with Warren in tow. A bad cut on his right cheek (now stitched) might well scar, there were smaller cuts and abrasions all over his exposed skin, and his Armani suit was beyond help, but he seemed unconcerned about all of that. His expression was haunted, and Scott could only imagine what he'd seen. Scott didn't embrace him; the chasm between them had been wedged too far apart by Warren's pride and Scott's indignant guilt, yet they'd been close once and it relieved Scott to see him alive. Scott offered him a hand instead. He took it. "Can we drive you home?" Scott asked.

"I . . . Yeah. Thanks."

Scott glanced at Jean. "Go get your overnight bag, hon."

The casual endearment made Warren's lips thin, but Scott hadn't meant to rub salt in the wound and realized what he'd done only after he'd spoken. Frowning, he dropped his eyes to the tiled hallway floor as Jean glanced between the two. "It'll just take me a minute," she said, "but Scott, they're taking blood - "

"Where?"

"Harkness Pavilion, Fourth floor. Follow the signs. I'll meet you there."

Nodding, he headed off with Warren in tow. Being O-negative made Scott much sought after by both the Red Cross and their own mansion med lab, and several pints of the blood Hank had packed earlier had been Scott's. Now, neither he nor Warren said much as they wound through the maze of the medical center. TVs blared in antiseptic waiting rooms, and people were gathered around them, watching, faces blank or stunned or angry. Finding where to donate was easier than Scott had expected. There were, indeed, signs, and a long line snaked down the hall. They got into it, and Scott thrust hands in his pockets, staring at the floor, while Warren pretended interest in the indecipherable abstract art on the walls. They listened to people chatter. There was some speculation on who had engineered the attacks, but even more about others' welfare. _"Did you know anyone . . . ?" "Well, my secretary's daughter's husband . . ." "My neighbor is a policeman . . ." "I haven't been home since it happened . . ." "My daughter's best friend was . . ."_ Adversity unified, even if only in the horror of uncertainty.

After a few minutes, Warren turned back towards Scott. "I saw a woman jump," he said softly. "I could've caught her."

Scott raised his eyes to Warren's specially tailored suit jacket. "Not wearing that," he said.

"Brilliant observation!"

Scott winced. "I just meant you couldn't have gotten free fast enough."

It was the kind of straightforward observation that Warren had always appreciated in Scott, and he didn't immediately reply. In the shadow of tragedy - and out of the shadow of Jean - their usual animosity had been shunted aside, at least for the moment. "I should have thought to get free," Warren said. "You would have."

"Maybe. Maybe not."

"I should have gotten free after, at least."

"Why didn't you?"

Warren glanced over sharply but the question had been level, not accusatory like the ones in his head. "I don't know. It sounds stupid, but I was just . . . too shocked, I guess."

Scott studied Warren's face, part of him unable to imagine why Warren wouldn't have thought to fly, and he wondered if Warren had simply been afraid to reveal himself. Perhaps, but Scott also knew that Warren _didn't_ think clearly in a crisis. He didn't freeze up or panic, and he could follow orders, but his thinking tunneled - like most people's, really. Scott had never understood how he kept his own head under pressure. He just did. If he could act, he could think. What drove him insane was to wait - yet Warren could bide his time and watch for an opportunity.

_Like he did with Jean,_ Scott thought to himself - unkindly. Then logic interceded. Warren may have bid his time, but he hadn't gone behind Scott's back. It was Scott who'd been dishonest, and whether or not he'd meant it, Warren had been a victim of Scott's own attempt at self-deception. So now, he tried to make up for it a bit. "All I could think, when I saw that second plane hit, was that if I'd _been_ there, if I'd gone to get you instead of just calling . . ." He stopped. People around them could hear, and he looked right at Warren, mouthing, _I could have stopped it. _"But I wasn't there," Scott finished.

Warren seemed to understand Scott's gesture. "If you'd gone running down there, Jean would've been worried sick. And there's no guarantee you'd have been in the right place at the right time. If wishes were horses, we'd all ride."

"Same back atcha."

"That makes me feel _so_ much better." The words were sarcastic, but the faint smile was genuine. A nurse was moving methodically down the line, asking blood types.

Scott raised his hand - "I'm O-negative" - and that was enough to get him ushered right to the front. Warren said he'd wait in the lobby, where there was a TV. Tables had been set up outside the donor center for volunteers to take names and information. Scott lied about the length of time since he'd last given, said two months when it had been only six weeks, but he was young and healthy, and this was _some_thing he could do. He had to do something.

It was nearing seven o'clock in the evening before the three of them walked from the hospital out to the Mercedes that Scott had commandeered. He told Jean to leave her car; she was too tired to drive, even in the ghost traffic that remained in the city since the disaster, and she'd have to be right back at the hospital in the morning. At least the chief resident had given her until ten, instead of expecting her back at seven.

They headed southwest from Columbia's Medical Center, towards Warren's apartment off Central Park. In the light traffic, it took less than half an hour to reach 72nd Street on the east side, and over the radio, they caught reports that more than two-hundred fire-fighters and seventy-eight police officers remained missing. Warren thought about the men he'd seen rushing up the stairs inside Tower One, and wondered how many wouldn't be going home that night. "Stay for a while," he said impulsively when Scott had reached his building. "Jean's exhausted and if she goes back to the mansion, she won't get any real rest. There's the president's speech at eight-thirty, too. You won't make it back in time to hear it. We'll get some dinner and listen."

Scott decided that Warren had to be desperate for company if he was inviting them to keep it, but said, "All right," and let off Jean and Warren at the curb in front of an elegant, 1890's art nouveau entrance, then went to park and walked back to the building. Warren was alone, speaking with the doorman. Seeing Scott, he said, "I sent Jean on up." The two of them followed. The building was silent and Scott wondered if that were typical of the place, or part of the day's general mood. The city that never slept had been frozen mute with shock, muffled beneath a cloud of ash.

Scott had never seen Warren's new apartment, and was both amused and unsurprised to find that he had the penthouse with windows all around, giving a panorama of the city. These matched the building's early 1900's style and were framed by marble casings carved in sweeping motifs of sensual elegance, and Warren had decorated accordingly - art deco furnishings, Robiesque Tiffany lamps, and _École des Arts_ ornamentation. Scott traced a stained glass oak-and-acorn light switch, then wandered over to one of the draped windows. Normally, the view would have been impressive as the sun went down and the city's lights came on, but today, Scott's eyes were drawn to the black mar on the southern horizon. Jean stood at the window just to his right, and Warren beyond her. They all stared at the same thing.

After a while, Jean asked, "Do you ever wonder what use our powers really are? I mean, when you think about something like today . . . "

She trailed off, and remembering what Xavier had said to him earlier, Warren spoke. "We need to do what we can do as ourselves. Scott gave blood, you patched people up." He stopped. He still wasn't sure what he'd done. "Is what we can do as human beings less important than what we can do as mutants?"

Scott and Jean both turned to look at him, and embarrassed suddenly, Warren headed off for the kitchen to see if there were anything to eat. As it turned out, the housekeeper had gone home early and while Warren couldn't blame her, with most of the city shut down, it left them at a loss for dinner until Jean drew on borrowed memories and the larder to produce a pasta in cream sauce while Warren changed and Scott drifted about the big flat like an unanchored skiff. The pasta was not only edible but excellent, and they ate like college students, sitting on the floor around Warren's beveled coffee table while they watched Bush's speech on the wide-screen TV. Afterwards, Warren broke out some good sherry and they got drunk. If the gulf between them would return when morning dawned, for that night at least, they remembered how to be friends, and Warren put them in the guestroom together, even loaning Scott clothes for the next day. Jean had washed hers. She fell asleep by ten, and Warren went to bed by eleven, but Scott couldn't sleep. He sat up watching the news and talking to EJ on his cell phone while the effects of the sherry wore off.

By the time he hung up, it was well after midnight and the room was lit only by the blue glow from the television. Scott paced over to the windows. Beyond the glass, the city stretched, etched in neon and electric yellow; Central Park made a dark slash off to the west, pockmarked by street lamps like fireflies. Feeling frustrated and penned in, Scott took Warren's key and went out. The doorman nodded to him as he exited onto the sidewalk beyond. He wasn't sure where he was going; he just needed to be in motion.

He'd assumed the area around Warren's building would be safe, but on a night of such upheaval, nothing was certain and there were always human dregs who'd take advantage of any calamity. So when one shadowed figure appeared out of an alleyway right in front of him and another came up behind, two thoughts struck him in quick succession. First, that he'd lived off-and-on in New York for five years without the baptism of a casual mugging. And second, this was the wrong night.

He didn't have his visor, but he did have years of sparring with EJ, and more recent workouts in Reed Richard's Danger Room, plus the stonewalled rage of the whole day just seeking a target. One mugger pulled a knife. Scott reacted with a block, a punch, a second block, a hammer-fist strike, and a throw. It cleared him enough space to safely reach for his glasses. Then both his attackers were knocked into unconsciousness by barely moderated force-blasts.

It had all taken less than a minute, and when he was done, he was breathing hard, heart pumping, adrenaline making him high. Only then did he notice that he'd been sliced on the lower arm and was bleeding onto the sidewalk. He pressed the artery inside his elbow, trying to stop it, and thought it might need stitches, but wasn't too serious. Yet after giving blood earlier, he knew the additional blood loss could make him light-headed.

"I don't know who needs saving more here - you or them."

Scott spun around, but no one was there.

"Look up."

He did as told, finding a shadowed figure attached precariously to a white stone balustrade on the brick building above. The figure jumped down where Scott could see him better. He wore a costume that Scott recognized from newspaper articles. "My friendly, neighborhood Spider-Man?" Scott asked.

"Got it in one, Mr. I-Wear-My-Sunglasses-at-Night."

"I don't think a guy in red-and-blue spandex has any room to talk."

"Hey, at least it's not banana yellow."

Scott had to laugh at that, half in amusement, half in sheer relief that he was still standing, and the muggers weren't. Spider-Man had turned to wrap them up in webs. "That was an interesting finish," he said, almost off-hand, "with the eye-lasers." But Scott hadn't missed the fact that he was moving so as to keep Scott in his line of vision.

"They're not lasers - no heat. And I'm a mutant," Scott replied bluntly. Not much point in denying it. "You can call me Cyclops." So Frank had dubbed him, half in jest, but vocalized to a stranger, it sounded as ridiculous as the red-and-blue spandex looked.

Finished with the riff raff, Spider-Man walked back over and Scott was surprised to discover that he was both taller and wider across the shoulders than the other man. With EJ as a roommate, and now surrounded by Jean, Warren and Hank, he'd developed a bit of a height complex. "Cyclops, eh?" Spider-Man asked. "Did you lose Odysseus?"

"Very funny."

"I've heard of mutants. There was an article in _Popular Science_ just a couple months back. You have an X-gene that causes physiological modification at adolescence - gives you superhuman abilities."

"I thought you were a crime-fighter, not a science geek?"

From the twitch of red fabric across the man's lower face, Scott thought he might have smiled. "Science geek by day, superhero by night," he quipped.

"Just your friendly -

"- neighborhood Spider-Man, yes." But there was something bitter, not amused, in the spider-man's words this time. "All I'm good for - mugger patrol."

"That's something."

"Tell it to the people in the Towers. If I'd been there -"

"- you could have climbed the walls to rescue them. And a friend of mine could have flown. And I could have shot the second plane out of the sky before it even hit. What if, what if."

Those words were bitter, too, and the spider-man's head jerked sharply. "A lot of people will be saying that tonight, I guess," he said.

Scott didn't reply, and neither spoke for a minute, nor even looked at the other. Scott was staring at the trussed-up and unconscious lumps of his attackers. "What do you think makes a hero?"

"You're asking me?"

"Yeah, I'm asking you, Spider-Man_." _

"Doing something to help because you can."

Scott nodded, mostly to himself. "That doesn't require special powers. The most useful thing I did today was give blood."

Abruptly, Spider-Man leapt sideways and attached himself to a wall, watching Scott from that peculiar angle. "I have a question for _you_."

"Yeah?"

"What's the difference between a hero and a superhero?"

"Dunno. Superhuman abilities?"

"Absolutely nothing."

That reply caught Scott by surprise, but before he could reply, Spider-Man pointed to his wounded arm. "I think you're giving more blood than you intended today. You'd better go get that looked at. See you around. Cyclops." And he scampered up the building wall into shadow.

"My name's Scott," Scott called after him, impulsively.

For a moment, there was just silence and Scott figured him long gone, then a voice drifted back, "Mine's Peter."

* * *

><p>In the wake of the attacks, the city of New York first banded together in a solidarity of distress that thumbed its nose at her callous reputation, then entered a shocked hibernation of several days the likes of which Jean had never seen. Streets in lower Manhattan were vacant, and even the boroughs were quieter than usual while the news flashed pictures of flowers stacked in Union Square and drawings of children in Central Park. Rescue workers wore stunned expressions, family members tacked up images of the missing on walls and telephone poles, and the death toll changed from estimated to actual, acquiring names. A pink-ash cloud continued to drift over lower Manhattan, making the sunset red behind a wounded skyline.<p>

When the city woke at last, she woke like an angry bear, grief-mad and grateful for, but also mildly resentful of, the solidarity offered by the rest of the nation (Washington excepted). It hadn't been their cities hit, and like anyone in mourning, New York didn't want to be told 'We know how it feels.' Grief, Jean had learned during her residency, was an individual thing. In this case, an individual thing nine-million strong including the outer boroughs, and what people wanted depended on who was asked, but the desire to strike back topped the list of many. One of the ER nurses who Jean worked with put it succinctly, albeit with resort to cliché: "You don't mess with New Yorkers." She was wearing a big pin with an American flag on the collar of her scrubs, and an expression of defiance on her round face, and Jean had felt an empathic pride that lasted until she heard over the radio on her drive home about a Muslim mother and daughter who'd been hounded out of a grocery store. Then she was ashamed. Hurting innocent people wasn't what she wanted. She wasn't in favor of hurting anyone, in fact - she was a doctor - yet another part of her wouldn't have minded seeing an eye for an eye, and her own mixed feelings confused her.

Scott's anger took a different direction. A New Yorker only by transplant, his rage was less personal, and overlaid by cynicism. He found the sudden explosion of patriotism mildly nauseating, but didn't share this with Jean, Warren, or even the professor. Their pain was too raw, yet he told EJ over the phone, "If I see one more idiot waving an American flag like that'll bring back the dead, I think I'll puke. They won't be the ones sent overseas to Afghanistan, or waiting at home."

"Take it easy, man. It's an angry city out there. It's an angry country all over," EJ replied. "And scared. People are scared. Dad said Sunday attendance is way up."

"I bet. And I know people are scared." He stopped, remembering what Frank had told him back in March: _This country is like an open camp now, at ease, confident - but in five years, it will not be. Threats real and imagined will create paranoia. _"We're in for a rough ride." And by 'we' he wasn't sure if he meant Americans generally, or mutants in particular.

"Boxing shadows," EJ said. "It makes people mad. Pretty soon they start hitting whatever looks solid, even if it's not casting a shadow, y'know?"

Just a few days later, Bush announced the creation of his Office of Homeland Security and Scott listened to the speech along with the rest of the mansion. One part caught his ear: _"Our response involves far more than instant retaliation and isolated strikes. Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign unlike any other we have ever seen. It may include dramatic strikes visible on TV and covert operations secret even in success." _

It was the mentality of a foxhole, just as Frank had predicted, and against a faceless enemy that, being faceless, could shift at need. Amorphous wars mutated too easily into witch hunts, and that was the genius of guerrillas and terrorists, to create fear of the suspected rather than the seen - not an environment conducive to rationality, and Scott disliked the open-ended nature of what he heard. Anything deemed dangerous could become a target, and how long until the noose was tightening around their own necks? _Threats real and imagined will create paranoia. _And Scott understood something at last that had been teasing the back of his mind for days. A man couldn't see where he was going if he was always busy looking over his shoulder.

Despite these private worries and angers, another result of the September attacks was to make Scott and Jean more acutely appreciative of each other - not because they'd been in danger that Tuesday, but because they hadn't, yet understood now that time was mortal, always dying. Each day, each breath spun out behind them into gossamer impermanence, and the future took on the aspect of shattered steel and concrete. They had the now, and that was all. Scott touched Jean at night with gentle fingers, and her kisses had grown thoughtful, as if memorizing what he tasted like. Once, he woke to find her sitting up in their bed in the dark, cross-legged and facing him while he slept. When he asked her what she was doing, she replied, "Watching you breathe." He'd done that with her, too, but thought she meant something rather different.

Life at the mansion stuttered through the rest of September and then fell into October. Leaves changed and students plotted costumes for Halloween. A strange fervency had overtaken them, as if they would force enjoyment from the holiday if it couldn't be coaxed. Halloween was also Scott's birthday, and he turned twenty-three. If he'd gradually stopped worrying over the age gap between himself and Jean, he'd remained subconsciously aware of it and was glad he could once again claim to be 'only' eight years younger. Yet it was at his suggestion that they dressed up as Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, on the theory that one's demons were best controlled by waving to them.

Uncharacteristically, Ororo kept to her bedroom that night. She was missing Frank, Jean said, and the two of them debated whether they should pry her out or leave her in peace. They'd nearly settled on leaving her in peace when an even more uncharacteristic development sent them both rushing up the stairs (Jean almost tripping in her skirts) to bang on Ororo's door and insist she answer. Throwing the door open, Ro glanced from one to the other. "What?"

But Scott and Jean were laughing too hard to speak, so they just grabbed her by the hands (one each) and hauled her after them, back downstairs.

There in the foyer sat Charles Xavier, in costume - improbably - as a _gorilla_, a rather displeased gorilla, in fact, given the mirth his choice seemed to have generated among the mansion denizens. "You all assume I have no sense of humor."

"Whether or not he's got a sense of humor," Scott hissed under his breath to Ro, "at least he's got hair!" And she was forced to bite a lock of her own to keep from dissolving into giggles.

It wasn't until much later, as Scott and Jean were readying for bed, doing their usual dance around each other in the bathroom, that Jean said, "He did that on purpose, you know."

"Wha-?" Scott's mouth was full of white toothpaste foam.

"The costume. He did it to make us laugh."

Scott spat out the toothpaste and reflected that sometimes being leader meant surrendering one's dignity on purpose.

* * *

><p>Snow geese had moved south, caribou had shed their antler velvet, and Arctic char had migrated upriver. The beluga whales and seals were leaving for warmer water, the whitefish and lake trout had spawned and the caribou were mating. The crash of males at battle echoed through pine and spruce and cedar. Tourists went home and the snows came. Late fall had howled into Chisasibi off the eastern shore of James Bay, and the green man whom locals called a wendigo was seen less and less. Charles Xavier thought it was time. He called his elder students together and gave them marching orders. "North," he told them, and handed over the clipping that Erik Lehnsherr had sent to him. He didn't tell them how long he'd had it.<p>

So an astonished Scott, Ororo, Jean and Hank put on black leather, climbed into the Blackbird, and off they went. "It might take more than a few hours," Xavier had warned them, so they'd packed street clothing, too, and jackets.

Chisasibi was a small town of only three-and-a-half thousand. In summer, it was busy with tourists and residents came and went, by car or on foot, while children played in the streets. In winter, though, everyone fled indoors, making it less likely that the Blackbird would be stumbled over by accident, but they hid it anyway under a white tarp, then wandered around through the snow on the northeast side of town beyond the river that gave the town its name. Farmland in summer, this area made a white plain in winter, but their random searching brought them no closer to finding anything big and green besides the few clumps of trees, and the cold paralyzed even the limited skin their uniforms exposed. Scott quickly gave it up as pointless. Calling his team back to the plane, he had them change into civilian clothes and head into town. Henry stayed behind; if the locals thought Bruce was a wendigo, there was no telling what they would make of a big, furry blue man. Even so, the other three stood out like sore thumbs. Tourists were mostly gone and the brown Cree locals stared at them. Scott led them into a diner called GooGoom's Kitchen. It was late afternoon, but a little early for dinner. The waitress/counter help grinned and popped her gum. "_Wat chia_. You guys lost?"

"Just passing through," Scott said.

Her eyebrows went up at that. In winter, the James Bay Highway saw virtually no traffic, so Jean hastened to add, "We came up to photograph the Northern Lights. For a calendar company."

The woman's mood altered instantly and she called out to a pair of old men sitting in a corner booth. "Rodney, Joe! These guys are photographers! They come to get pictures of the Lights. Think your son could show 'em around, Joe?"

_Great, Jean_, Scott sent. _We don't even have an_ _automatic camera in the plane, never mind a real one. Usually, the less said, the better. _

Jean pursed her lips, irritated. _Well she didn't look ready to buy _your_ story, Austin Powers. _

He ignored her to tell the woman, "Ah - actually, we're headed further north. We just stopped in for the night."

So they ordered an early dinner and the woman - who turned out to be the owner - seemed happy to sit and chat, in part so she could push her town as a summer vacation resort. She sounded like an infomercial, and as a result, whenever any of them tried to steer her obliquely towards 'local gossip' (and big green men), she remained stubbornly obtuse.

"Well, that was utterly useless," Scott said when they finally got away. He thought they all needed a crash course in detective work beyond reruns of _Homicide: Life on the Street. _It was already dark, and they pulled up their heavy jackets against the cold. "Let's see if we can find a grocery and get something for Hank. We'll sleep on the plane and try again tomorrow."

As it turned out, the grocery was fifteen minutes from closing (nothing stayed open very long after dark in winter) and they collected deli sandwiches. Scott fished out his Canadian money as they approached the cashier, who was chatting with another employee. The language was neither English nor French. As she rang up their purchases - barcode scanners having reached even here, he noted - another shopper approached to check out as well, and Scott was relieved they weren't the only ones holding up evening cleaning. Then he heard Jean's little gasp of, "_Bruce!_"

The man jerked his head up, mouth open in surprise, and for just an instant, Scott wasn't sure if Banner would stay put or make a break for it. And it was, indeed, Bruce Banner, recognizable even with different glasses and half buried inside a khaki-colored parka with wool lining. Scott tensed to give chase if he ran, but he just sighed and - conscious of the watchful eye of the counter help - said, "Let's check out, okay?" Jean had thrown her arms around his neck and was hugging him, bouncing a little on the balls of her feet in her excitement, as if she were eleven, not thirty-one. Scott finished paying, then waited for Bruce to do the same.

Outside finally, the wind snatched their breath and the night had grown even darker. "What are you doing up here, Jean?" Bruce asked, two bags of groceries in hand.

"Looking for you," she half-shouted back.

His lips thinned. "That's what I was afraid of." And he turned his back on them, shuffling down the sidewalk through snow tossed up by plows. Scott, Jean and Ororo traded glances, then hurried to follow, hoping that's what he'd intended. They reached his car, a small, run-down Dodge Neon that barely fit all four of them inside with their heavy coats. Jean sat in front with Bruce and he used his rearview mirror to study the two wedged in his backseat. "Scott, I recognize from pictures, and Aurora, I think we've met at least once?"

"Yes, sir," she replied. "At Jean's defense party. And it's Ororo."

"Ah. Ororo. My apologies." He started his car and headed out of town. The night was clear and away from the town's lights, they could see the brilliant, eerie, oscillating display across the black of heaven, like a billowing sheet. Jean, Ro and Scott all sucked in breath. "The Aurora Borealis," Bruce said, sounding strangely dull, as if bored by the sight. The Lights cast the landscape in a spectral glow that Scott found appropriate, as they were traveling down the road, speaking with a dead man.

"How did you escape?" he asked into the silence.

The shadow that was Bruce's head lifted and Scott could feel more than see him looking in the rearview mirror again. "How about if you hold your questions till we get back to my place?"

"Hank's along," Jean said. "That's why we were buying food. Can we swing by where we landed and pick him up?"

"Where you _landed_?" Bruce asked, but then shook his head. "I would, but he won't fit in the car with the rest of you. He'd take up the whole backseat - and yes, I know what happened to him. I'll take your friends to my place, then we'll go get him."

So Bruce dropped off Scott and Ororo, then headed off with Jean. Scott hoped they could find the plane. Jean and directions were shaky at best, but she'd seemed reluctant to let Bruce out of her sight, now that she'd found him. (And Scott was more than a bit jealous of that.) "Come," Ro said, her hand on his arm. They entered the small cabin set off among the pines. It was barely more than a single room with a main floor and a loft area above, furnished sparsely, although Bruce had his share of electronic toys - a microwave, a computer, a fax machine, a printer, and what looked to be cheap lab equipment, but not, Scott was amused to note, a television or radio.

The two of them put away Bruce's food as best they could (the kitchen was so small, it wasn't hard to guess where things went), then sat down on the couch to wait. The cabin itself was chilly, and though they doffed their heavy jackets, they left on their mittens and mufflers. Neither said much, though once she asked, "Did you expect to find him?"

"Not like this," Scott admitted.

Finally, they heard the car coming back, and when Banner entered, he pointed to the fireplace. "Why didn't you start a fire?"

"Uh - I wasn't sure if I should?" Scott answered.

Rolling his eyes, Bruce peeled off his own jacket and bent to do so as Hank and Jean came in behind him. Ro had stood to fetch Hank's dinner, and he sat down on the rug near the fire to eat, avoiding the flimsy, cheap, two-chair dinette set. Jean stood yet by the door, hands clasped, her coat still on. She watched Bruce like the proverbial hawk and Scott rose to pull her jacket off. It was cramped in the cabin with the four of them plus Bruce. "Are you going to tell us now?" Jean asked finally when Scott had seated her on the couch.

"Yes, yes, wait a minute. I haven't eaten dinner myself." And he rose from stirring the fire to go fix something in the small kitchen, returning with a bowl of soup, some bread, and a glass of golden fluid that Scott suspected was whiskey. Plopping down in a wing chair, he pulled around a TV table and ate half the soup before looking up at them again. The cabin had gone very quiet.

"What are you four doing here?" he asked again. "Yeah, yeah, looking for me. Why?"

"Charles Xavier received a . . . hint . . . that you might still be alive," Hank told him. He was already done with the first deli sandwich and well into the second. "He sent us to investigate."

Banner shook his head. "Good God. I don't guess it occurred to him - or you - that I didn't want to be found?"

"Bruce, we thought you were dead!" Jean exclaimed. "Betty and Brian - "

"- know where I am, thank you."

"How long - ?"

"As soon as I trusted myself enough to contact them. They're in Cincinnati, with Betty's family."

"Have you been to see them -?"

"No. And I won't go until I conquer this." He softened a little. "I talk to them on the phone and by email. It's almost like the time Betty and I were working at two different schools. They understand." And he nodded, as if that settled it, but Scott could feel the twist of hurt in Jean, that Bruce hadn't seen fit to contact her. He patted her knee, and realized that his mittens were still on. Removing them, he took her hand and squeezed.

"So if you don't mind, professor - what happened?" he asked. "We saw you in the park the night after the explosion at the Hammer Building. And we saw you jump off that cliff and get shot."

"I'm not a professor anymore, Scott. Call me Bruce." Then he sighed and pushed away the mostly empty bowl of soup. "Unfortunately, I can't answer most of your questions because I don't remember myself. When I'm . . . in my other form . . . I have the mental comprehension of a dim four-year-old, and about the same memory capacity. The one advantage of that form is that it appears to be remarkably difficult to _kill_."

And from the tone in which he'd said that, Scott suspected that Banner had tried.

"In any case, the story's fairly simple, or what I know of it. I fell in the river and was carried out to sea, then flung back on the rocks by the tide. When I woke, I ran from people. I don't know how the wounds healed, but the creature's skin is very thick so I doubt the bullets did much damage." Banner continued to speak of his mutated form in the third person. "It took several weeks before _I_ reemerged, even for brief periods. The creature is triggered by any strong feeling, especially negative ones - anger, fear, sorrow. It wasn't until I was well away from people and safe for several days in a row that I returned to myself. Even then, I couldn't seem to hold it for more than a few hours.

"It took some time before I figured out what was going on, because I couldn't remember much. I didn't know where I was, or what really happened when the creature took over, or even what date or month it was." And he reduced what must have been quite a tale to, "I kept heading north and this is where I ended up."

"Why didn't you contact us?" Jean asked, her shock and hurt finally transforming into anger. "Didn't you think we'd help?"

"I'm damn dangerous, Jean!" Banner all but shouted, then shook his head and shivered hard all over. He pushed the little table away and got up, walking around as if to calm himself. "You shouldn't even be in here with me. I still don't have that _thing_ under control. I'm not sure I ever will."

"Perhaps we could help?" Henry offered.

"Absolutely not! I'm won't risk either of you again! Didn't I hurt you enough?" Banner was shaking worse, and abruptly, he raced for the door, tearing his shirt off as he went. "Don't follow me!" And he pelted away through the snow.

The four of them stared after him and Jean tried to rise, but Scott held her back. "Do what he says."

"I concur," Hank said softly. Jean glared at them both, but complied.

Though it wasn't terribly late, with nothing to do in the cabin, and no sign of Bruce, the four of them talked a little before bed, then fell asleep wherever they could find a comfortable spot. By morning, the fire was out, the cabin freezing, and despite his exhaustion, Scott rose before the sun to lay fresh logs in the hearth and start it again. Hank hadn't stirred, but Jean and Ro were both curled in tight balls despite the throws that covered them, and Scott's hands were so stiff, he had to try four times to light a match. For once, he found himself regretting that his optic blasts _didn't_ ignite things on contact. Finally, with the fire going, he thawed out a bit and went back to his piece of the rug.

The next time he woke, it was because the front door had opened, letting in a draft. They all sat up and stared as Bruce came back in; he was wearing nothing but the equivalent of a Speedo and the women turned away in embarrassment. "Bruce?" Hank asked.

"Let me put on some clothes," he said and disappeared up the ladder to the small loft overhead. They could hear him rummaging around. The rest of them roused slowly and took turns in the bathroom. By the time Bruce returned, dressed, they were all rumpled but awake.

"That's why I can't dare to be around anyone," he told them. "When I . . . change . . . I get violent easily. Out here, I can get away and no one's endangered, but anywhere near a city, I don't have the space to do that."

"You would at the mansion . . ." Jean started.

"No, no, and for a third time, no. I realize you mean well, but the answer is no. I'm staying out here until I can find some way either to reverse this, or contain it. I built that damn machine; I'll find a way to . . . undo it."

"At the mansion, you'd have our lab - "

"Jean!" Hank and Bruce said at the same time, then Hank turned to Bruce. "But she does have a point, you know. We could work on this, too. Three heads are better than one."

Bruce glared a moment, then sighed. And thus it was decided. He, Hank and Jean spent the rest of the morning assembling the data that he'd acquired since he'd been able to think clearly enough, then he sent them on their way after lunch with printouts and several DNA swabs.

Back on the plane, they redonned their uniforms and prepared to leave. None of them spoke much. Despite the outcome, Jean and Hank remained troubled, unsure if Bruce had ever intended to contact them. He wasn't the Bruce they remembered - whether due to depression, or from a need to maintain emotional equilibrium in order to hold his human form, it didn't change the fact. Jean's shoulders sagged and her mouth was pinched. "He blames himself," she said to Scott. "He was always such a careful man and to have this happen . . . I wish he'd let us help him more."

Scott hesitated before replying. In all honesty, he didn't want Banner in a mansion full of kids. The man clearly believed in his own menace, and Scott was inclined to take him at his word. "He's trying to protect you."

She gave a sad smile. "I guess."

* * *

><p>They'd left on a Saturday to avoid interfering with school, and returned late on Sunday, not bothering to remove their uniforms as they trudged upstairs to report to the professor what they'd discovered. He was waiting for them in the game room, where several of the students were entertaining themselves watching television. Bobby glanced around as they trooped in and then nudged St. John, whom he'd taken under his wing since the other boy's arrival. "Hey," he said. "The X-Men are back."<p>

Scott, Ro, Jean and Hank all stopped dead in their tracks to stare, and both Xavier's eyebrows went up. "The _what_-men?" Scott asked.

Bobby flushed beet ripe. "Um, the X-Men? Professor X's men? I mean, what are we supposed to call you?"

"Your teachers," Hank replied.

"And I am a _woman_, in case you did not notice," Ororo added.

Someone muttered, _sotto voce_, "We kinda noticed." Scott thought it might have been Julio Rictor, but otherwise, no one came to Bobby's rescue and he was forced to fumble on alone.

"Well, I mean, yeah, I know you're our teachers, but like, when you, um, go off and do the mission stuff. Like getting Johnny. Or me. That stuff. You sorta need a name, don't you? I mean, you can't be 'Those guys in black leather from the Xavier Institute.'"

"We can't?" Ororo asked as Jean muttered, "'X-Men' sounds like a comic-book."

Hank's voice was wistful. "I always wanted to be a superhero."

Scott glanced at him, then at the professor who, he thought, appeared to be struggling very hard not to smile. "X-Men," Scott said, as if trying on the name for size. "Oh, hell, why not?" Then he straightened his shoulders and pulled in his chin, aiming for hauteur but winding up with mere pomposity. "To me, my X-Men!"

The whole den burst out laughing.

"Then again," Scott said, though his voice could barely be heard above the noise, "maybe not."

* * *

><p>"Scott, we're going to miss the ball dropping." They'd fled the noisy mansion den and Dick Clark's <em>Rockin' New Year's Eve<em>, and now Scott led Jean down a meandering path and through an iron gate outside the mansion walls.

"How many times have you seen that? You can miss one year."

"But it's a tradition. I won't feel like it's 2002 if I don't see the ball come down."

Scott paused to stare at her, as if he found that assertion quite astonishing, and she shrugged. "It's not that I mind a walk with you" - she squeezed his hand where it gripped hers - "it's just that it's cold out, and it's almost midnight and . . . well, if you wanted to be alone, we could've gone to our room."

"You're just looking for an excuse to get my clothes off."

Her cheeks went hot, but she forced herself to quip, "Fringe benefits." Why she still blushed when he said such things more than six months after she'd begun sleeping with him, she wasn't sure. Conditioning, perhaps. She didn't want him to think her a slut, though she suspected he was vain enough to be more flattered. Nonetheless, innuendo was as far as they typically went, and their few forays into something more candid had been spurred by exigency.

They didn't say much as they headed towards the lake, and she could sense a tension in him, though he did his best to hide it. She wondered what he couldn't say in the mansion that he had to drag her out into the cold night? It had snowed the week before, but only crusts remained on the edges of rocks and tree roots and the bank above the lakeshore. He held her hand tightly, to keep her from slipping as she skittered down after him in a shower of pebbles and dirt. He caught her at the bottom and they stared at one another a moment. "What is it?" she asked him.

A flash of alarm crossed his face; he clearly hadn't intended her to read his anxiety. "Nothing," he lied.

And now she was as anxious as he was. It lodged in her throat as her mind flashed over the past two months. She hadn't thought anything was wrong, but now realized he'd been a bit distant of late. Her second year residency in internal medicine had kept her so busy, she hadn't noticed, and perhaps therein lay the problem. She wondered if he were feeling neglected? Yet she couldn't imagine Scott being so cruel as to stage a breakup on New Year's Eve.

Numb now with more than the cold, she followed him along the shore of Breakstone Lake to the boat dock pier, then out to the T at the end where there were built-in wooden benches. She could hear little waves lapping at the support struts and somewhere out in the lake, a fish jumped. With the black shadow of pines encircling the water, the star-speckled sky seemed to be caught at the bottom of a wide bowl. She could see the patterns of Taurus and Orion overhead. He hadn't let go of her hand since they'd left the mansion, and now sat her down, although he remained standing, his fingers still twined in hers. He didn't say anything at first, just kept staring at her, his eyes glowing red behind the glasses. Scott's eyes _did_ mirror his feelings, just not in the way of most. The more strongly he felt, the brighter they grew. "Scott, what _is_ it?"

He moved finally, but not to sit beside her. Instead, he knelt at her feet, his grip almost painful.

"Marry me."

It took her a good ten seconds to process what he'd just said. Then, stupidly, she asked, "What?"

She watched him swallow, his Adam's apple bobbing above the collar of his jacket as his thumb brushed the back of her hand compulsively. In a voice that cracked, he said, "Jean Grey, will you marry me?"

She threw herself off the bench at him, knocking him over on his ass, her arms wrapped about his shoulders. Her joy (and relief) bubbled out of her in laughter. "Yes, yes, yes, yes . . . !" Then he was laughing, too, and dropped back against the cold wooden dock, bringing her after him, half propped on his chest so he could kiss her. Her hair fell around both their faces.

After a minute, they got to their feet. It was just too cold outside to be lying on anything for any length of time. He fished in the pocket of his slacks. "Don't laugh at this," he warned, taking her left hand and pushing a ring onto it.

It wasn't a diamond. It wasn't even a real ring, unless one were five years old and playing dress up - all gold-painted aluminum with a big white plastic gemstone. He must have bought it at a party shop or toy store, and she was too astonished to be offended. "What on earth?"

"Well, I wanted to have _some_thing, but I figured you'd better come with me to pick out the real thing or I'll walk out with a ruby and think I had a diamond." He grinned a little, then confessed, "Actually, I've been to every jeweler in Westchester County, and a few in Manhattan, but all I could decide was that I wanted your opinion."

She held up the silly plastic thing as if admiring it and said with a straight face, "Well, I like this one." And for just an instant, she had him. His mouth dropped open as if he thought she were serious - then he made a hissing noise and leapt to tickle her till she was screaming with laughter and slapping at him. "_Stop! Stop!_" He relented, and she collapsed on the seat again, breathing heavily. "Thanks," she said.

"For stopping?"

She smiled at him. "No. Thanks for wanting my opinion."

Leaning in, hands resting on her shoulders, he kissed her brow. "Always."

And that, thought Jean Grey, was why she was marrying Scott Summers.

* * *

><p>But only two years later, fate would intervene yet again. Styling himself now as Magneto, Erik Lehnsherr redesigned Bruce Banner's machine not just to trigger latent X-genes, but to <em>create<em> them in normal humans. It didn't work as it should have and the artificial mutations proved unstable. And fatal. Fortunately, thanks to the X-Men, there was only one death instead of hundreds, or even millions. Yet the machine would, in fact, claim two lives - one indirectly.

The first time, Jean Grey had escaped the full force of the transforming wave because Henry McCoy had knocked her out of the way and taken the brunt of it. The residue that had washed over her had been only enough to reopen her suppressed telepathy, not to trigger a full transformation. But the second time, she wasn't so lucky, and her mutation leapt forward in a way that nature had never quite intended.

It didn't kill her, but it did cause a power spiral that terrified her because, this time, the effect was much more profound. She'd barely survived the first evolution sane, and was afraid of what the second would do. Enough of her life had been thrown into turmoil that she didn't need her powers to rebel as well. So she hid it, or tried.

Naturally, it was what she'd feared most that, in the end, proved salvatory. Fate had a way of upending expectations.

When the dam of Alkali Lake had crumbled and the torrent had borne down on the trapped X-Men, snapping pines and sweeping away everything in its path, it was Jean's augmented power that had saved the lives of her friends and students - and of the man who'd preserved her sanity, the man who'd taught her to love, and a third who'd challenged her equilibrium, but would end up cementing her resolve.

She'd made herself a hero at last because she'd been both able to help, and no longer afraid to do so.

Unfortunately, the cost was her life. Or so everyone thought.

* * *

><p><strong>Notes:<strong> Yes, I consider the film universes of _X-Men_ and _Spider-Man_ to be consanguineous (although obviously, not that of _The Hulk_) .


	24. Epilogue: The Boathouse

Let us end with the house.

Built in the mid-1800s for long-term guests at the Xavier Mansion, the boathouse was a small, two-story structure perched on the eastern edge of the property's lake and accessed by a gravel drive off Greymalkin Lane. Trees screened it from the mansion proper, giving at least the illusion of privacy, and the back porch was a deck that overhung the shore, connecting to a pier that ran thirty feet out into the water and ending in a T. Originally brick, the house had been refinished at some point with white stucco, making it look as if it belonged on the Mediterranean, not in New England, and its newest pair of owners had gone with that theme, decorating the exterior accordingly with terra cotta and flowers. There was even a grape arbor.

At the moment, the arbor was trimmed in white crepe and glass bells, and the yard around it had been covered by portable tables under taped-down paper cloths and decorated by sprays of lily-of-the-valley in small glass vases and little crystal swans full of wedding mints. Closer to the dock, rows of folding chairs had been set up to either side of a single aisle, festooned with more flowers - white lilies tied by teal bows. A torpid breeze stirred the bells and the lilies, the hair and the fancy dresses of the guests. They'd arrived from as far away as California and Italy to see the wedding of Jean Grey and Scott Summers, a wedding that, two years ago, none of them would have dreamed could take place.

Dead women didn't get married.

Just now, the groom was pacing about by the arbor, his face as white as the crepe above. He wore a black tux with a yellow-rose boutonniere, as did the man who followed him, saying, "Chill _out_. Or you're gonna _pass_ out." EJ Haight, his best man.

"And you weren't just as bad?"

"Yeah? So I'm speakin' from experience."

A second man approached, dressed like the other two, his hair as dark as his coat in shocking contrast to the white rope braids of the woman on his arm. Francesco Placido and Ororo Munroe. Ro wore a teal dress the same shade as the bows tying the lilies, and Frank carried a plastic glass filled (rather high) with red Umbrian wine. "Drink," he said, handing it to the nervous groom.

"Bossy," Scott replied, but he took the glass and finished half in one swallow, then made a face even as Ororo reached up to pluck his bow-tie straight and adjust his boutonniere. "Man!" he complained. "I am not five-years-old!"

"Fine, then. I shall go see the bride." And she walked away.

"_Everybody_ gets to see the bride but _me_," Scott lamented.

"Patience, man," said EJ. "It's bad luck to see her before the ceremony."

"And heaven knows we don't need any more of that."

While Scott spoke, his eye had been caught by the tardy arrival of a tall man awkward in his suit, coarse hair slicked into submission and muttonchops shaved neatly for once. However ridiculous he appeared all dandied up, women still looked twice and threw him a smile, some of which he returned with flirtatious brass.

"Logan's here," EJ observed.

"Yes."

"Why wasn't he at the dinner last night?"

"He wasn't invited."

EJ snorted, amused. "Don't know what you're worried 'bout. She ain't wearing white for _him_, Slim-boy."

"I don't think that's what he had in mind, anyway."

"Exactly." EJ elbowed Scott, who didn't reply, just stared down at the wine in his glass. He finished it, dropping the plastic on the grass inside the arbor, where someone could find it later to clean up (hopefully without stepping on it). Behind his back, EJ and Frank exchanged exasperated glances.

A few guests had begun moving towards the folding chairs set along the bank, but the rest were slower to follow, and three of the California contingent hurried over before taking seats. Diane, EJ's wife, kissed Scott's cheek, then Clarice offered him her hands. He squeezed them, hyper-aware of the simple band encircling the third finger of her left hand. "I'm glad you came," he said, "even if your husband couldn't."

She flashed him the smile that he'd fallen in love with once. "Wouldn't miss this for all the gold in Fort Knox." And that was honest, and happy, not a veiled rebuke for the fact that he'd missed her own. But Jean had been only two months dead then, and he'd been unable to watch anyone else get married, especially the only other woman he'd ever really loved. She'd understood.

Now she stepped back to let Lee Forrester approach, awkward and shy in her nice slacks and blouse. "Rick, EJ, and now Scott," she said. "Three down. I guess that just leaves me."

"We keep tryin' to fix you up." Clarice shoved at her, good-naturedly.

"I'm not the marrying type," Lee said, "which is kinda funny, I guess, considering I was the _girl_ in the band."

"You were also the drummer," Scott pointed out. "You never exactly went with convention."

"And nothing of the future is certain," Francesco added. It stopped conversation as they all glanced at him. He held up both hands. "_Merda! _I am speaking generally! It isn't a prophecy!"

Which made them laugh (mostly in relief).

"What is this?" said a new voice. "Old home week?" Rick Chabon had wandered over, trailed by his wife, a pretty woman as neat-handed and petite as he was. They'd arrived from Cincinnati just the day before in a bright red Audi, Rick's Lake Placid Blue Strat (and amp) in the trunk. The students had been singularly unimpressed, doubting such a small, owl-eyed man could be the Rick Chabon of whom Scott and EJ had bragged all week, until he'd set up his gear and left them all jaw-slack with amazement (just as he'd once done to Scott, EJ and Lee themselves).

Now, Scott clapped his shoulder, then accepted a kiss from Tamika, his wife. "So, are we all set to play at the reception?" he asked. "Lee, did you find a trap set?"

"Yes, I found _a_ trap set, but not much of one. Don't expect miracles."

"I'm just hopin' the resurrection of Soapbox don't crash and burn on the landing pad," EJ warned.

"You're mixing your metaphors again," Diane told him.

He ignored her. "When was the last time we all played together? Five years?"

"Six," Rick corrected.

"It'll be _fine_," Scott said. "We could play some of our old shi- . . . stuff . . . in our sleep."

"Which is what I suspect you'll be," EJ told him. "Or at least out orbiting Venus."

Scott smacked him on the arm, then said, "Go sit down, guys. I'd like to get married sometime today."

Laughing, they scattered, all but his groomsmen. Most of the guests were seated now as well, the students making giggling blocks on either side of the aisle as they tossed wedding mints at each other. "We were never that bad," Scott told EJ, conversationally.

"We were worse," EJ replied. "Remember the cellophane-over-the-exits during exam week?"

Scott palmed his face. "Christ. I'd like to _forget_ that."

"Ain't never gonna happen. That was _your_ brainchild, Slim."

Scott and Jean's families were still milling about at the rear, shepherded by Violet Haight and the professor, who acted as the Odd Couple of wedding directors but nonetheless worked together beautifully. They'd converged on Elaine, who seemed to be complaining about something yet again. "I wonder what it is this time?" Frank muttered to Scott.

"The price of rice in China," Scott replied, making the other two laugh.

"Mom wants to strangle her," EJ said.

"_Every_body wants to strangle her," Scott replied. Elaine had spent the past week - the past four months, really - expressing her indignity at the notion that her daughter would be married in a less than suitable (to her mind) setting. "You could at least have chosen the mansion _gardens_, Jean."

But Jean had shrugged off all protests with, "I want to be married on the boat dock." And she hadn't budged. Ever since returning from Alkali Lake, she'd shown a remarkable immunity to all Elaine's disparagement and vituperation. "Dying has a way of putting things in perspective," she'd told Scott once, and he might have been amused, if he weren't still half-afraid that the other shoe was going to drop.

In fact, it wasn't nervousness of the ceremony that had him on edge today, but a fear that fate would step in to snatch her away again, and not return her this time.

Scott's family watched the Drama-of-Elaine with ill-concealed disgust, and Chris Summers escaped to walk over and slip something into Scott's hand. A crucifix on a chain. _The_ crucifix, in fact, that his father had carried all through 'Nam, even in Hoa Lo Prison, the infamous Hanoi Hilton. Scott's jaw dropped and he started to hand it back, but Chris refused to take it. "No. I meant to give it to you last night. I wore that on the day I married your mother. You keep it now. It's seen a lot of unlikely things." And he walked off again. Scott opened his palm to examine the tiny figure stretched athwart its cross. It wasn't silver or gold, just cheap stainless steel, which was why the North Vietnamese had let his father keep it.

_"I am the resurrection and the life . . ." _he murmured, slipping it over his head and inside his shirt. He'd never believed in life after death until Jean had died, and he still wasn't sure what he believed, but he believed in something. Maybe he just believed in her. "You have the ring?" he asked EJ.

EJ held up his hand, Jean's wedding band circling his pinky. "You remember getting DeeDee's stuck on your forefinger?"

Scott laughed. "I thought I'd never get it off; your Dad was ready to strangle me."

"I think _DeeDee_ was ready to strangle you."

"It wouldn't be a proper wedding if something didn't go wrong." Then Scott reconsidered, and turning, knocked on the wood of the grape arbor they stood beneath. "You didn't hear me say that."

Finally, it was time. Jeremiah Haight took his place behind the podium at the end of the dock and EJ and Frank ambled off to seat the mothers while JaLisa and Violet began an a capella rendition of _Amazing Grace_. The song choice had been Jean's, but Scott hadn't argued. What else did one call getting a second chance?

When the mothers were seated, Frank hurried back to escort Ororo down the aisle, then EJ followed with Barb Clark. Scott remained at the back.

"This is our wedding," Jean had said two months ago when they'd flown out to Los Angeles to plan the ceremony with Jeremiah. "Nobody is giving me away; I give myself. And we're going into this together, so we'll walk down the aisle together, not just walk out."

Thus, Scott Summers would escort Jean Grey to the altar.

As he stood there, looking over the heads of the hundred-and-something assembled guests, he wondered why people had such a hard time remembering their wedding day. Everything was perfectly clear to him.

It was his last coherent thought for half an hour.

Jean had emerged at last from their boathouse, and both breath and sense deserted him. It wasn't the dress. He'd seen that already - not on her, but he'd seen it hanging in their closet, heavy with pearlescent beading from breast to hips, and crisp ivory satin. ("White would make me look like death warmed over," she'd said, and Scott had had quite enough of Jean and death, thank you.) He'd taken the dress out of the closet once, too, lifting the protective plastic sheet to run fingertips over beads and cloth. _It's going to happen_, he'd told himself. On a spring day, ten years from their first concussive introduction, she would become his wife, and he her husband.

This was that day, and it wasn't the dress that shook him, or the veil in her hair, or the smile on her face. It was the ethereal fire that surrounded her body and the glow in her dark eyes.

Phoenix rising.

They'd never been Just Jean and Just Scott, whatever they'd told each other. They were each the sum total of their life experiences, the events that had brought them to this day, and the people they'd known, and loved, and lost - or kept. So now, she came to him as the whole of herself, reborn, united, and most of all, unafraid. And that had everything to do with him.

_Through many dangers, toils and snares,_  
><em>I have already come;<em>  
><em>'Tis grace that brought me safe thus far,<em>  
><em>And grace will lead me home . . . .<em>

Not fate. _Grace._

As she drew up beside him, their friends, family and students rose from folding chairs, making little gasps or other sounds of shock. But Scott wasn't afraid. He took her gloved hand, tucking it into his elbow as she cast her red-gold nimbus around them both. Phoenix rising.

Then they walked up the aisle, together.

* * *

><p><strong>Notes: <strong>And so Naomi gets a wedding. Thanks to Minarya for the covert edit. Yes, this was obviously written with the events of X2 in mind, though a wedding was always how I'd planned to end this novel and I did anticipate the Phoenix transformation after seeing Jean's reaction on Liberty; I just didn't know how (or if) they'd follow that thread. Hence Bruce's machine was designed with Erik's machine in mind, etc.


	25. Afterward

**1) How much of this did you have plotted in January 2001?**

Actually, a surprising amount was plotted at the outset - though I don't think I had any real idea of the final _length_. Still, I had a sneaking suspicion it would be big, which is why it sat on a back-burner for about a year before I took it up again in January of 2002. One reason the background for many of my movieverse stories seems fairly consistent is because I'd already planned Scott and Jean's history for this novel. Those early parts mostly involved their first date, the Bruce-Banner arc and Jean's breakdown - i.e., the first couple chapters and about the second half of the novel. Scott's college years were a fuzzy blur with a few specific events sketched in, and the general parameters. Thus, that's the part that expanded the most in the writing.

EJ Haight and Frank Placido were first "born" when I plotted the _Heyoka_ series. It was thus obvious and natural to use them in _AIoF_. It's somewhat ironic, then, that they made their public debut in _Climb the Wind_, by which point, they were actually fairly well fixed in my mind.

The plot element that fell into place last was the inclusion of 9/11 events. I debated whether to deal with them, but as the timing of the story would automatically span it (since Scott proposes on New Year's Eve, 2001/2), it could hardly be ignored, and it fit very well into the themes of the story. So when I returned to the novel in 2002, the ending was adjusted to include it and the rest of the plot arc was filled out. Very little tweaking was done to account for _X2_ - mostly what's seen in the epilogue. I had real fears that the details of _X2_ would torpedo _AIoF_, but there turned out to be surprisingly little conflict. The origin story of Bobby is the biggest clash. Obviously, the story conflicts more strongly with events from X3, so just disregard that.

**2) Why did you call _Accidental Interception_ a Romantic Comedy when there's so much other stuff going on, some of it very serious and unfunny?**

First, let me explain the term "comedy," as it's easier. I'm using the traditional definition - a story with a happy ending - although certainly I did try to give _AIoF_ some humorous moments and a certain whimsical tone at times. But it's not humor, by any means.

As for "Romance" - well, I deliberately designed the novel both to adhere to and to break the conventions of the genre.

The usual pattern for a Romance (dating all the way back to Greco-Roman antiquity) is to follow the courtship of a Hero and Heroine (capitals intentional) from their first meeting (or significant interaction) until their eventual marriage (or other public confirmation), with the to-be-assumed tag, "And they lived happily ever after." The story should _not_ extend beyond these points, nor follow (significantly) the story of anyone else. The Hero and Heroine are the main protagonists.

During their courtship, the couple should experience challenges, and may be parted for a portion of the story. Common challenges include opposition from family and friends; some kind of real or perceived social inequality; the interference of a femme fatale or male rogue figure who woos (or just kidnaps/attacks/rapes) the Hero/Heroine; plus actual physical danger to one or both protags. But True Love will see them through all these things until they're permanently reunited at the story's close. That's the traditional Romance formula.

It should be evident how _AioF_ fits that pattern, as well as how it doesn't. It follows Scott and Jean precisely from their first significant meeting until their marriage ten years later. They're the main protagonists and the story has few scenes that don't include one or the other (or are about one or the other). They're parted for a portion of the story (by Scott's college years), and face opposition from family and friends (largely due to their age difference and, to a lesser degree, social status). They both have fairly significant romances with another characters that distract them temporarily from each other, and the Hammer Building Incident places Jean's sanity at great risk (plus other adventures).

So _AIoF_ has everything a good romance should. (Hey, it's a long book.) The fun came in taking the conventions and _playing_ with them.

First, the Hero is a 'status inferior' to the Heroine in not just one or two, but three ways: he's significantly younger, he's from a lower socio-economic class, _and_ he has a lower educational degree. Three strikes, you're out.

Second, the external love-interests of the Hero and Heroine are real, rather likeable people, and those romances fail for mundane reasons. Clarice is not a femme fatale and Ted is not a bastard. In fact, poor Ted is rather tragic. And even the antipathy between Scott and Warren is more Scott's fault than Warren's.

Last, and most importantly, the novel itself may be centered on Scott and Jean, but their romance is really just the backbone that supports the real plot: the evolution of the X-Men, and the coming of age of Scott and Jean (individually). Thus the novel has two interwoven plots, and they intersect at the explosion in the Hammer Building.

So is _AIoF_ a Romance? Yes, and no. It might best be described as a coming-of-age story in Romance clothing.


End file.
